


A Sermon, of Sorts

by CrimsonFootsteps



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspection, Joseph Steyn is oblivious and a horrible excuse for a human being, M/M, Nipton Lottery, Slavery, Slow Burn, Violence, Vulpes Inculta is his own warning, Vulpes kind of has feels and kind of has a minefield, belt whipping, spy games, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:12:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonFootsteps/pseuds/CrimsonFootsteps
Summary: Now!  With proper summary!Kid, a young man with no motivation or prospects, just on the run and out of sight as he could be since he was a child, catches the attention of Vulpes Inculta somewhat before the destruction of Nipton.  But of what use can he be to the frumentarii or to the Legion, and what hard lessons must he learn, about the world and about himself, to get him there?





	1. Chapter 1

Dry desert heat hit Kid in the face the second he opened the door. The air was like a living thing, swirling malevolently, hungry to suck away every drop of moisture it could find. It hadn't been cool exactly inside the hotel, but the insulated walls and dimmed windows helped a little. Inside, it was a little easier to forget about the homicidal Mojave sun.

How people, like Kid's parents for instance, worked outside in this weather was beyond him. The idea of feeding his sweat to the desert's hunger for hours, as the cannibal sun inched its way down to the sadistic cold of the night, all for a paltry crop of corn or mutfruit? It just seemed ludicrous. Kid's parents hadn't done too well by it, since they'd been more than happy to sell Kid off to an itinerant gambler in exchange for food and caps.

Well, Kid didn't blame them. He was still pretty fucking salty about the whole thing, but he didn't _blame_ them. When you measured a hungry mouth to feed, too young and weak to help eke out a living, against full bellies and the caps to make up for a potential shit harvest, it wasn't hard to figure out what anybody in that situation would have done.

They hadn't even asked the gambler what he wanted with a little boy. Probably they thought they'd sleep better at night not knowing.

Kid had been really little at the time, so little the nickname, which later became what name he had, suited him just fine. And the gambler hadn't been a mean man, or a bad man. But he hadn't wanted Kid for himself, for anything. He wanted collateral for a lot of caps he owed another man, one who wasn't so nice.

When that went down crooked, Kid used the instincts of all small prey animals and scampered off, hiding in cabinets and crevices and the top floors of burned out building shells too damaged to hold much more than his insignificant weight. He ate what he could scavenge, which was often spoiled. Sometimes adults, down on their luck themselves, would take pity on him and share some food. Adults could bring down the rats or the roaches for meat. Some adults poisoned him on purpose, for fun.

 _That was a good lesson too,_ Kid thought, spitting in the dusty street. A lesson on how to watch people's eyes to see what they wanted from you. People who just wanted a good belly laugh out of watching some kid roll around in agony in his own sick had much different eyes from the rest of 'em. Everybody in this town, for instance, had vulture's eyes.

Eyes flat as the dull side of a bottle cap, the lot. They didn't care about anything or anyone as long as it benefited them something. Kid sometimes wondered how he'd wound up there. Rose picked him up out of misguided pity, before the baby that hadn't been and the dust and all the fucking johns and Joe's consistent verbal abuse about her age and failing looks sucked the pity right out of her.

Joe-- _oh sorry_ , Kid thought sarcastically, imagining the affront on the man's face as he corrected the boy for the eightieth or so time, _Mayor Steyn_ \-- was good at that: at making people just like him. At sucking everything good out of them till all they saw when they looked at people were walking bags of caps.

Though Kid kinda figured half the town had been that way already. _Can't give Mayor Steyn too much credit._

He raked a hand through his sandy hair and sighed, shifting the satchel on his shoulder, even though the weight made the reinforced leather bite hard into his thumb. He hated the heat; how it shoved down on him, oppressive, like it could make him small enough to be easily consumed. Goddamn cannibal Mojave sun. He could feel it on the bridge of his nose, just under the sunglasses. Hot. Heavy, licking. There was going to be sunburn there, because he couldn't walk fast enough with that bag on his shoulder, and because he'd wasted his time woolgathering about bullshit from the past that didn't matter anymore.

"Sometimes, Kid," he muttered to himself, "I think you really are good for nothing."

Even coming from himself, it didn't have much sting. All being good at something, good _for_ something, ever got anyone was used. The best was to stay in the shadows, doing this thing or that thing when people remembered he existed. Like today, carrying a ridiculously heavy bag of caps and other trade junk, first to the general store, then to the Great Hall to deliver Joe's cut.

The general store hummed with activity, loud barter that hurt Kid's ears, so he just dropped the leather rucksack, fished around for the box of goods, and dumped it unceremoniously on a shelving rack. In mid-vociferous argument, old Bert called, his tone suddenly completely normal, with non of the put-on anger and disgust he called up for his barter, "Steyn's cut out of that?"

"Nah," Kid said, without turning around.

The door closed on old Bert's curse. Kid shrugged and got the much lighter bag back on his shoulder. Life was tough everywhere in the fucking Mojave, and the odds were pretty good Kid would deliver the cut, in cap form, the next day anyway. Bert could whine all he liked.

The thing that always struck him about Nipton was how pretty it was, in a quaint way. Most of the main buildings were in good condition, which was a far cry from the other rat-holes he'd lived in. It looked like something out of a preserved picture postcard from before the War, if you cut all the people out of it. The Town Hall was especially pretty, big and imposing. Steyn called it 'aristocratic' and Kid figured he was talking about the way that the building's bones stacked up and exerted a quiet, casual pressure over the rest of the town.

Inside, it was cooler. Not cool, but cooler. He flipped a wave at whoever was behind the desk without bothering to see who it was and headed upstairs to Joe's office. Lately, the older man had been giving Kid funny looks, sizing him up looks, like he thought there were a few more caps he could squeeze out. Kid didn't intend to stay in the Mayor's presence long enough to let him figure out a solid business plan for that.

It smelled odd, in here. Good and bad at once. Mothballs and rotted old carpets, but also cologne and lemon wood polish. Kid navigated the big airy corridors and the narrow, steep stairs, till he got to Steyn's office. There, he knocked, and after a moment, the Mayor's voice called out, "Come in."

He sounded... irritated, as if he'd been interrupted.

Kid's defenses went up. _Not a normal cap drop,_ flashed through his mind. _Joe ain't alone_ , followed it. _Joe's excited about something_ , next. _Probably bad news for somebody._ All this, in quick bursts, as his hand found the doorknob, turned it, and opened it, as simply as if everything was routine.

Kid cased the room fast and quick, on reflex. Ridiculously large, the size of some people's homes, with a lounge of sorts on one end and the desk and computer terminal at the other. Steyn, wearing a greasy grey suit that strained around the last few years' healthy paunch, sat next to another man. Steyn's body language curled toward his visitor like a triumphant carrion bird.

Steyn wasn't by nature quite as pale as Kid, but he was close, and he'd been outside for a while without a hat, if the sunburn on his balding pate was any indicator. He had a strange sort of face, the top part big and aquiline like a vulture ready to tear at meat, the bottom pinched mouth and hangdog jowls, like he was just so disappointed in this world.

He oozed what Sylvia called 'saddlesoap' right now. He wasn't talking, had cut off what he had to say to watch Kid sidle into the room, but it was clear enough anyway. He had on his most pleasant expression, every hint of the rude son of a bitch he really was hidden behind a politician's half-smile.

The other man was something else entirely. He was facing away, so Kid couldn't see his face or expression, but his posture was... different. Different from anything Kid had ever seen. It was relaxed, but in such a way as muscles relaxed before violence. Yet there was a tension to it, something indefinite that plucked at some string in Kid's memory he couldn't quite untangle. That tension could have been anticipation, if the visitor- the stranger- wasn't quite as obvious in his crowing as Mayor Joe. It could have been displeasure, too. Kid gave them both a wide berth when Steyn gestured impatiently and absently at the cabinet behind his desk.

"Oh, just put it in there," Steyn said.

Kid could feel eyes on his back as he bent to get the caps out of his rucksack. That feeling, of someone having drawn a bead on him with a weapon, didn't stop as he straightened and put the caps carefully on a shelf next to Steyn's prized laser pistol.

A drop of sweat ran down between his shoulder blades, and the office, even though it was warmer than the lower levels, was cool enough not to drink up the moisture. Kid could feel it, all the way down, a delicate wet little itch.

When he turned, he got a good look at the stranger, and was immediately sorry he had. From behind, there was only that curious tension. The young man had broad shoulders but narrow hips, a lean physique that was probably muscular enough beneath his tailored suit. He wore the suit, unsurprisingly, better than Steyn wore his, as if it were something he wanted to say. The suit itself was the color of sand, and cleaner than most Kid had seen. The man's slightly tanned olive skin was a little darker, and a good contrast.

He wore a matching hat, tilted at a rakish angle, but it was clear the hair beneath was both very short and very dark. His features were hard yet unassuming, but so symmetrical they had a hypnotic sort of charm, and they were... absent, Kid thought... they weren't telling either him or Steyn anything. The stranger's face reminded him of architecture, of the flat white concrete of the Hoover Dam by night. He wondered if it hid power and a maze of a hundred rooms behind its blank exterior, the way the Dam did.

That, all of that, would have been all right. In fact, it would have made the stranger more attractive than anyone who had ghosted through Nipton in a long time, because Kid liked people who kept their feelings to themselves.

But the stranger had eyes. He had _those particular_ eyes. The eyes were pale blue, like lit burners, and they weren't giving Kid anything he'd ever seen in anybody's eyes before. They weren't bottle cap eyes. They weren't the sad, sweet eyes of somebody who wanted to do right by the world but wasn't quite sure how. They weren't the poison eyes of somebody who just wanted to spread all the pain he could, for the fun of it. They weren't even a soldier's eyes, half full of the bad things he'd seen and half hard with the things he'd have to do, or a Powder Ganger's eyes, half full of elation and the rush of breaking fragile things and half fragile himself, like somebody was going to step on his throat one too many times...

They were bright and they were fierce, and Kid didn't have an emotional lexicon to untangle what was behind them, but it made him feel hot, and trapped, and very, very small.

The stranger's attention had not gone unnoticed by Steyn, who cast Kid a sour glance and then shifted it immediately to solicitous honey as he turned back to his guest. "Of course, everything in this town is yours for the asking, to celebrate our deal," he said.

The stranger's pale eyes, simultaneously freezing and burning blue, flicked to him.

Kid felt his blood run cold. _Oh, he fucking didn't._

"This is Kid," Steyn continued, gesturing with good-natured expansiveness. "He's definitely the youngest and freshest thing we have here, though we do have some lovely ladies if you-"

Kid interrupted, hard, harsh. "I'm not on the fucking menu, Joe."

The stranger focused on him again, harsh, practically unblinking. It entirely distracted him from the transformation on Steyn's face, the twisted features, the reddish purplish rage. Those eyes were...

"You will address me as _Mayor Steyn_ , boy, and you're on whatever I say you're on," the Major snapped. "You think you can freeload forever?"

"How old are you?" the stranger asked. His voice was light, tenor, and felt gentle and generous, on the surface, like a caress. The way he formed his words was iron hard, and cold. He bit through the vocabulary.

Kid stiffened and felt a distinct, icy chill, a desire not to answer, even though this man didn't give him the ugly vibe bad men had when he was a child. He couldn't back down from those eyes, and his self preservation told him not to stay silent. He could feel how his body tensed and shifted, ready to run, ready to hide in some tiny crevice somewhere, before he said, "I'm eighteen, sir."

Steyn scoffed. For some reason he was reading the stranger like he wanted Kid to be younger than that. In that warm, heavy atmosphere, Kid's skin came out in goosebumps. He wanted, very badly, for the stranger to stop looking at him, to blink or to turn away, because until he did, Kid wouldn't be able to look anywhere but those fierce eyes.

After a loaded pause, the stranger did look away, back at the Mayor, though before he did something shifted under the surface of his gaze and it wasn't something pleasant. Neither Kid nor Joe were safe in that room, even if Joe clearly couldn't see it.

Or maybe something was finally trickling its way through Steyn's thick skull to the lizard brain within, because he looked, for just a second, uncertain. Then the stranger said, "I will give you an additional four hundred caps for him."

Kid shook his head, trying to shake the absolute confidence he heard in those words away from him. He backed up against the cabinet, fumbled for Steyn's pistol. His head kept shaking, back and forth, as if the conversation was dust he could toss out of his hair. "I'm not for sale," he snapped, and pointed the gun. He'd never fired anything this high tech, but it had a trigger. The barrel wove in the air between the two of them. "I'm not for sale, and I'm not fucking _his_ to sell."

The pistol leveled, he inched his way back toward the line of chairs at the corner. He couldn't waste time looking at Joe right now. The stranger had an expression on his face right now which appeared, on the surface at least, to be interest, as if Kid had done something particularly curious. At first, when the gun came out, he'd tensed, but now he was back to that first loose-limbed posture.

Slowly, the stranger rose to his feet. It was a fluid gesture, graceful and smooth.

"Sit down," Kid snarled. "I will pull this trigger."

The head tilted, combining the same mild curiosity with something decidedly... sadistic. Kid's heart felt like it was too big for his chest, beating holes through his ribs.

"You may pull that trigger any time you wish," the stranger said, in the same gentle inflection he had used when addressing Steyn, but there was something colder in it now, something Kid thought he could actually hear. Something surfacing as if from under a still dark lake, or climbing out of a deep hole in the ground. He took one step toward Kid then, and Kid's finger spasmed on the pistol's trigger. Steyn made a sound, but no lasers emerged, no holes appeared in the stranger's pristine tan suit.

Kid pulled the trigger again and again, but it didn't even make the odd little click that a revolver would if it was empty.

The stranger's smile was almost pitying and almost smug, and certainly it was cruel. "That is not loaded," he said, carefully, each word formed with perfect control. He continued to advance, as he spoke, unhurried, and Kid shrank back before him. The bright blue eyes, flaring now with some other unnameable emotion, flicked to the cabinet, and pity overtook satisfaction in the curve of his mouth. "And you will not reach the ammunition before I reach you."

Kid couldn't even look. It shouldn't have been that far. Maybe six or seven steps. He didn't remember how many he'd taken, when he believed he held a weapon in his hand and not a useless piece of pre-War metal. The distance to the rounds, which he could now see clearly from the corner of his eye, bright yellow and seductive, seemed to stretch out away from him, growing wider and wider.

 _He was fast,_ he thought. _He'd always been fast,_ he thought. _Maybe the stranger wasn't as good as he thought. Maybe the gun was easy to load._

His hand shook. "What do you want me to do?" he said.

The stranger raised one hand, palm upward, and held it there, expectant.

Kid's hand shook even more as he edged closer and dropped the useless pistol on the stranger's palm. Light-colored, long fingers curled around it, passed it to the other hand and extended it behind him to Steyn. The Mayor's harsh, fast breathing slowed as he fumbled his gun out of the stranger's grasp and trod back to the cabinet with it. Kid wondered if Joe had even known that the thing wasn't loaded, or if he'd seen the weapon and forgotten he left it that way.

Watching the gun was easier than watching the stranger. Watching Joe was easier, even with the bruised, stiff movements that made it clear how angry Steyn really was. The stranger hadn't done anything, anything at all, but take a few steps, lift a hand, and yet Kid felt pressured, felt overwhelmed. All that man had to do was look at him and he felt pressured.

"I will take him back now," the stranger said. There was the gentle jingle of caps and then a rather heavy thud. Four hundred caps. More than Kid had ever seen, or heard, in his life. Firm fingers curled around his shoulder, and he was turned, guided, toward the door at the far side.

The pressure of palm and fingertips through his simple linen shirt brought him back, somehow, to reality. He twisted out from under the grasp, on reflex, and made the dash for freedom he ought to have made when he had instead gone for the gun. Or rather, he tried to make the dash but in mid step his forehead met the floor of Mayor Steyn's office, pain exploded through his skull and he felt something hot and wet flood the lower half of his face. He was momentarily stunned, and when he was able to think about movement, a second sharp pain exploded just over his hip and under his ribs. He spat out a harsh cry and tried to curl against it, to protect himself. The third burst of pain was a slow, hot pull across his scalp, and he was levered up to his knees by an unrelenting grip in his hair.

"Behave," said the stranger, his tone lower than usual, deeper and more commanding. Kid's vision swam with dark motes, and he couldn't seem to breathe right, snuffling through his mouth gulps of air that tasted like blood.

"And you," the stranger said, his tone shifted entirely back to that noncommittal, silken gentleness. "We have an arrangement?"

"Of course," said Joe immediately, his words falling over themselves. "And-- and I'm sorry about the boy."

The stranger's grasp was firm on Kid's shoulder as they descended the stairs, as they went down the steps outside Town Hall, and as they passed people Kid had known for years at least. Nobody said anything, and if Kid could see clearly through the blood still dripping down his face, he didn't think most of them even looked at him for long.

It didn't surprise him. He just felt numb, like he had when his folks had sold him off to that gambler. Except he didn't expect anything better from Joe Steyn or the town of Nipton. Maybe, the only person he'd expected anything better of was himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Humiliation. Kid thought that was what he was feeling as he trudged toward the blurred form of the town's welcome sign. It was strange to recognize it, because he didn't remember having felt it before. Not when he walked alongside the gambler, when he was a child. Not when he darted forward for scraps when he was starving. Not when he hid behind Rose's skirts when he had first got to Nipton. Never.

There was something about all those eyes on him, eyes of people he knew and most whom he personally hated, wondering what they thought was going on and if there was even a spark of care in them about it, that made him feel shame.

He should have been better at running, better at fighting back, better at staying out of sight in the first place. Just _better_.

Twice, maybe three times, he'd thought of a direction to bolt, but that humiliation settled in his stomach, a cold heavy weight. Anyway, the town was full of thieves, whores and gamblers, and the stranger tossed money around as if it were sand. He'd handled four hundred caps with a degree of distaste and nothing else, and Steyn simpered around him enough that Kid figured there had to be plenty more where that came from.

Kid didn't have any friends here, not where caps were concerned. And the stranger was fast. Maybe not as fast as Kid if the younger man could get a good sprint going, but fast enough that within arm's distance, he could clearly put a stop to any attempt at running. If Kid wanted to get away, he had to pick his moment. That moment wouldn't be on a wide bare street, vision half-obscured by blood and something else his pride didn't want him to think on, the center of fucking attention.

So for now, he put one foot in front of the other and did what the stranger told him to do: he behaved.

When they crossed the railroad tracks and dipped across the rocky, hilly outcroppings the tracks nestled in, it was another story. There were lots of twists and turns here, lots of rocks to duck behind, gullies to hide in. Kid was aware that many of those gullies were inhabited, and he didn't particularly like his chances bare-handed against even a coyote. But he only had to fend the coyote or molerat off long enough to get the stranger off his trail, and...

A bullet whined past his ear. The stranger, who Joe called Mr. Fox, shoved hard at Kid's shoulder. "Down," he said, the previous eerie calm giving way to a snarl of command. "Do not run far."

Kid felt a sudden surge of disbelief. _Would anyone obey that order?_

But then Fox turned, to where two raiders, Viper Gang from their looks, were advancing along the natural path in the rocks. A gun materialized in his hand and his features settled into something dark and joyful, the natural grace that Kid had observed refined of every extraneous bit of civilization as he wove into the fray. There was something beautiful in the way he fought, something compelling. Every time his pistol spat a bullet, it found its target, spraying crimson over the orange-brown rocks, sometimes shattering bone.

Kid realized he'd frozen in place where he'd been shoved, half in a crouch, watching this, and he further realized that there were at least two other Viper Gangers shooting at them from higher ground. If he kept up his stunned Brahmin impression, he was going to get slaughtered like one.

And he couldn't imagine a better chance to get away.

He ducked around an outcropping of rocks and got into a low crouch, practically a crawl. He'd wiped blood from his face several times, enough to mostly keep his vision clear, and his right hand became quickly gummed over with sand where the blood clung to it.

His hope was that Fox, terrifying as he was, would keep the attention of all the Vipers, but luck was clearly not on his side that day. He heard a snarl, "I'll find you, you little bastard-" and scuffled footsteps, misjudged shots.

This was bad.

Kid could try to keep the rocks between him and the enemy, could try to run faster, but the enemy had a gun and was coming up over high ground where she had the advantage. Kid would be a sitting duck for all the lead candy anybody wanted to sell him. After a moment's frantic thought, he ducked back around the same rock and up, trying to stay as silent as possible. Every hiss of sand or scuff of his shoes on the rocks made him curse himself out, violently, in his head. _Quiet. Quiet, damn it._

Just downwind, there was still a firefight with three guns. Somebody had somebody else pinned, but the wind kept carrying groans and whimpers too. Wounded. Not dead. Kid focused on his own goal. His boot soles were worn, almost as thin as moccasins, and curved eagerly over the rough contours of the rocks. He kept low and he kept quiet, moving when the noises from the battle below were loud.

When he got close enough to the Viper Gang member, he went absolutely still, like an animal. It was a skill he had learned as a child. Even his breathing became shallow, his eyes flat. He waited, as she paced deeper down toward the gully, searching for something to shoot at, spitting raw obscenities.

He dove into her in mid step, threw her over the ridge, where she landed hard and groggy. His shoulder had hit her thigh; immediately he jumped down after her, kicked her hard in the jaw and in the wrist and grabbed her weapon.

Then he stared down at her. The gunshots in the distance had ceased. There was a cold silence in the crevasse they'd wound up in, a frozen stillness. This woman meant to kill him. She meant to kill him because he was there, because she could sell his clothes or his belongings or even his fucking teeth, and because that was the kind of person she was. If she survived, she'd kill again and again and again, for a pair of boots or a child's toy or a shot of Psycho.

But Kid had never killed anyone before.

The air felt rich and heavy, almost haunted. Kid realized that he should be running. But he was trapped in this Viper Ganger's muddy hazel green eyes. His hand was shaking, just like it had been shaking in the Mayor's fucking office. But this gun was loaded. He just didn't know if he wanted to pull the trigger.

You ask half the people in the world, they'd say it's the right thing to do. You ask the other half, they'll say it's evil.

She'd landed badly, broke her ankle, but she could still crawl and still fight back if he got close enough. She was screaming at him, horrible words, terrible threats about him and his loved ones, things he'd never even thought anyone might do. Her face was red and hot but there were tears in her eyes. She thought she would die there, Kid realized.

 _Run_ , he thought. He could still run. Just go past her. He had the gun. It was getting quieter and quieter, just the wind and curses and wails. Not good, no matter who had come out on top. Who cared if she'd tried to kill him, he'd--

"Will you kill her?"

The tone was gentle, rich and sweet. That cool tenor tone that could be no one, ever, apart from Mr. Fox. Kid whirled, half raised the gun toward the man, who was standing a little bit above him on a stone outcropping, calm despite his face, his hands and his gorgeous suit being spattered with crimson gore. He also had his own gun in his hand, and when he saw the barrel of a weapon head his direction again, he flicked his own in Kid's direction, tilted his head and made a small tsking noise.

Kid had a split second where he considered trying to shoot, then remembered the wild, joyous beauty the other man had held on the battlefield and quickly pointed his gun back toward the downed, struggling Viper Ganger.

"I don't-" he began, and stopped, because he didn't know precisely what he meant to say he didn't.

The stranger moved easily across the jagged rocks. He glanced down impassively at the girl in the gully and then flicked his light eyes toward Kid. "No, I'm curious. Will you kill her?"

A shudder ran down Kid's spine. The young woman was crawling now, away. He didn't blame her. That icy, we're-discussing-the-weather voice would have made his skin crawl too, would have made him drag himself on broken legs and bleeding palms somewhere. And she only had one broken leg, if he read her body correctly.

Kid licked his lips. He ran his tongue over his upper lip and then his lower, slowly, noticing how dry and rough the skin there was. He didn't want to make eye contact, because the stranger's gas-flame blue eyes were pinions that could keep him for days, but he also didn't dare not look at him, so he looked at his feet. His shoes. They weren't dress shoes, as Kid had first assumed, to go with a suit. They were dark boots that extended up under the dress slacks of the suit. They shone, but were worn also.

The stranger drew a little closer. "Do you want to kill her?"

Kid shook his head.

"Why not?"

"When she-" he hadn't spoken to this man much and had some trouble at first forming and clearing his words. "-when she attacked me, when she was trying to kill me, I'd kill her. Now she's just trying to get away."

Fox's bright, intense eyes looked predatory, but his stern features looked... bored. "And is that all?"

Kid considered, again, turning the gun on him. The Viper Ganger continued to crawl away, cursing.

"She'll kill anybody she can kill," he said then, flatly, "for a few caps or a high, or some decent clothes. Because that's the way people are in the fucking Mojave. That's why Joe Steyn can sell me to you, even though I am a human being who didn't fucking belong to him. So... so who are we, to get on our high horse and judge her, when you're a slaver and I'm... well, I just don't fucking care."

Mr. Fox looked at him steadily, then his eyes trailed to the Viper, and he shot her, once, in the head.

"Come along," he said, and he was close, and the sense that escape was possible had already melted from Kid like sweat in the midday sun.

Kid followed Fox down the rocky outcroppings and to the gully, where an old makeshift campfire lay just before the groaning, twitching bodies of a few Viper Gang members the stranger had not given a swift death. Fox ignored them completely, as if their moans and cries were only wind on the rocks, as he pushed Kid down upon a makeshift bench.

As he pulled a handkerchief from one suit pocket and a bottle of water from another, Kid realized that not all the smears on the sand-colored suit were from enemy blood. There was a big cut, with a graze, upward along Fox's arm.

He didn't say anything, as the other man wet the handkerchief and wiped away the dried blood from his face, careful where the wound had already scabbed over. But then he reached up to take the handkerchief, and, steeling himself, met those eyes again.

"Hey, you're wounded too."

The voice that responded to him was dismissive and prim. "It is a scratch."

"So was my forehead."

Fox's head turned, and he regarded him calmly. The expression did not made Kid's stomach comfortable. After a moment, Fox said, "You are pert. But also attentive. Would you care to treat my wound?"

Kid swallowed. He ducked his head. He could still hear the moaning of their enemies, still alive. He still wanted to run, wanted far from this place, and would never be a fucking slave. But the cool, damp cloth had felt so good against his skin, and Fox in battle resembled something both natural and angelic, something impossible, so pure in its violence that it became a crimson saint. Something that made Kid tremble, and not in the unpleasant way he had in the town hall.

"Ye- yeah," he muttered. He took the handkerchief and the bottle, and before he wasted any more precious liquid he rubbed out the dirt and blood from his own wound with his hand and the rough edge of his jeans. Fox was stripping his jacket as he did so, and his shirt as Kid poured a little more water on the scrap of cloth and squeezed it out carefully. Looking up wasn't easy. Fox was as muscular as Kid had suspected, every inch of his narrow frame limned in taut, iron musculature. The pale olive skin was surprisingly as tanned as his face, though not so much as his hands.

The small wound was a knife cut, and it was high on the bicep. Neither of them had any powders or analgesics, but Kid washed it carefully, using the cleanest part of the handkerchief, and bound it with the same.

To his surprise, Fox only put the shirt back on afterward and didn't button it. Instead, he built and banked a good fire in the old pit they had settled by, and commanded Kid to attend it. Then, he went to where he had left the Viper Gangers.

They took hours to die.

Kid stared into the fire as the screams rose up into the desert air. He watched tongues of pale gold, of orange, crimson, even smoke gray, lick and dance and play. To the side of him, somebody was begging wetly for their life. Somebody's cold voice was telling them they deserved worse than they were getting.

The air smelled of voided bowels and blood, hot, stinging, visceral. The wood smoke was much, much better.

The fire was better. Beautiful clear, jagged, golden flames. But when Fox returned to the circle of the campfire, Kid shuddered and went up in goosebumps. Fox tapped him on the shoulder, commanded his eyes.

"Are you warm enough here to remove your clothes?"

Kid thought it an odd question. Why would Mr. Fox care? Perhaps he didn't, perhaps it was only some aristocratic jargon that meant 'do as I say.' In any case the fire was stoked, and Kid was warm enough, and he absolutely did not want to take his clothes off, ever, in front of this man.

So what happened if he said no?

Inwardly he grimaced. Then he slid down his suspenders, unbuttoned his shirt, untucked... unbuttoned his pants, stepped out of them, dropped his shirt on a nearby rock, stepped out of his shoes, pulled off his undershirt...

Fox trailed his fingers down Kid's neck, across his pectorals and down his abdomen, then up across the ladder of his ribs. He walked behind Kid and dragged blunt nails along the skin of his back, and Kid's breath hitched and whispered as he tried desperately to hide the pleasure he felt there.

Fox pulled his hair, hard. Fox gripped his chin roughly. He stroked every slice of skin, commented on its stubble. He tipped down Kid's jaw, examined his teeth. His fingers slid in, rough, along the gums. Then they stroked Kid's tongue and he had the curious sensation of feeling on the sensitive muscle the outline of the other man's calluses.

Fox pulled his fingers clear of Kid's mouth and shoved him forward, head down. Kid tensed as his cheeks were parted roughly. He'd never... never... what was clearly going to happen.

"I've never--" he managed aloud, as Fox teased his entrance with a wet finger. Without a word, Fox pressed into him, slow, and it felt... odd. Not bad, in any way. Not good exactly. Just sensitive and full.

"Mm," said Fox, as if it didn't matter. Kid wanted to hit him in the head with a fucking hammer. But then Fox was cupping Kid's still half-erect cock and stroking it, plucking lightly at the pale thatch of hair around it. He didn't touch it long. Instead, he gave Kid a sharp smack on the thigh, as if he were a pack Brahmin readied for a journey, and returned to a seat at his side of the fire.

"You may clothe yourself again," he said.

Kid stared at him, dully, numbly. He was trying to piece together what had just happened in his mind as he went through the simple, mechanical motions of dressing himself, just as he had done when he disrobed. He remembered the way he had been touched, and it occurred to him that only his own body had provided sensuality in it, in being touched that way. If he took the touches themselves without the sensations they brought in him, it was nothing more than... an inspection.

Humiliation flashed through him again and the banked fire was radiating far too much heat.

"You're the first man I ever met," he snapped, to disperse that feeling just a little, "who'd drop four hundred caps on a fuck slave he doesn't even want to touch."

Fox raised his eyebrows. "Your tone is very ill advised." He tilted his head, and it wasn't exactly avian, but reminded Kid more of the body language of Deathclaws, something best seen from a very great distance. The man continued, his tone holding polite curiosity over something low and dangerous. "Do you wish to be touched?"

It could not have been clearer that the word was a euphemism for discipline, and Kid reined himself in with some effort. He shook his head silently, then forced himself to mutter a gruff apology.

"That's really not good enough," Fox replied mildly. He took the fire stick and stirred a place where the deep red, banked embers were dying to gray. "But you are under something of a misconception, as well. The Legion does not take men, even very young men, for pleasure slaves. We rarely take adult male slaves at all, and when we do, it is generally for large work projects."

He removed his hat, stroked his clever, cruel fingers over the short shorn hair there, and Kid couldn't believe he hadn't figured it out sooner. In his defense, the Legion was a whispered bogeyman to him, stories of red cloaks and truly horrible ways to die, like the East was the edge of one of those old old maps: _here be monsters_.

But it made so much sense, now that he heard it. Legion were slavers. They had tons of resources. They were making their trek inland toward the Dam, everyone was talking about it. And that look on Fox's face as he stood to battle, that look of casting off the veneer of his humanity and becoming himself in the entire, that suited everything Kid had ever heard about the Legion just fine.

"Then..." he made his voice meek. "Why did you..?"

"Your mayor is a liar," Fox said, words like tombstones. "If you were one of his whores, and your resistance in that office was merely a ruse of innocence meant to entice me, then I would have no use for you at all."

"You mean I'd be decorating a... a cross somewhere."

"Yes." There was a curve of something akin to amusement on Fox's lips. He prodded the coals again, then stood. "I am going to put on my proper attire. It is a little closer to where the NCR patrols than I would have preferred, but this," he gestured with disgust at his blood-soaked shirt sleeves and filthy trousers, "is ridiculous, would you not say?"

"How do you have your clothes stashed here of all places?"

"It is a little further away, as I implied. I will go and return. I do expect you to be here when I return. The alternative is, as you said, 'decorating a cross.' Well, eventually."

It was far too hot by the high bright fire, but the way that Fox said 'eventually' made Kid's skin go cold and clammy anyway.

What if I shoot you in the back? he thought. I'd be doing the world a favor.

Fox half turned, but almost as if he had read Kid's mind, he added, "You seem to have an interesting dilemma regarding triggers. I would recommend that if you attempt to remedy that in the near future... do not miss."

Kid shivered and grabbed the fire stick, leaving the gun by his side. It wasn't on him to take down somebody who wove into a firefight like a goddamn invincible angel. Wasn't on him to take on the _Legion_.

He could run. He would just run, and all that talk of 'eventually' was only going to come true if Fox ever caught him. Nobody found him when he was a kid, after all. Nobody who was looking.

It was sound logic and his only smart idea, and he had a gun, and more ammo nearby if he felt like seeing Fox's handiwork as he searched the dead bodies. So Kid didn't know why he hadn't moved except to stir the fire or keep a bead on some predatory rustle among the rocks, when Fox returned, all sleek, matte leather and tattered, regal crimson.

"Curiosity or obedience," Fox said, laying a freshly killed animal by the fire. "You may be of use to me after all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references of torture, in keeping with the game canon for Vulpes Inculta. It also includes slightly sexualized inspection of a character's body, including brief penetration with dubious consent. Kid's reaction to it, when he realizes he isn't going to be raped, is similar to something at a doctor's office, but I want my readers informed and cared for.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a scene of corporal punishment, specifically a rather intense belt whipping. It is not enjoyed by its recipient (though he might get a little something out of the aftermath).

Fox had already gutted the animal, which Kid couldn't get a good look at through the fire. It already smelled here, from the people he'd killed, but Fox skinned the animal quickly and carved out decent sized chunks of meat. He skewered one on a long knife and held it over the fire, the fat sizzling, the flesh quickly browned. Kid waited, even as the rich aroma of cooking meat hit his stomach and made it clench and practically beg for a morsel.

Nothing would cook so quickly, no matter how much his stomach growled, so Kid decided to distract himself. Perhaps Fox wouldn't mind conversation. He swallowed, licked his soft palate and then his upper lip, and then murmured, "Where... where did you get the suit?"

Fox raised an eyebrow as he turned the meat over the banked coals. "The New Vegas Strip," he replied.

Of course. Kid nodded and dropped the thread of that conversation. He paused and raked the edge of the coals that Fox wasn't roasting the meat on. Then he attempted another trial of conversation.

"Will you... tell me about the Legion?"

This was a good choice of question. It was hard to tell, in the red-amber glow of the campfire, the only light remaining in the deep, cold evening, but Kid thought he saw a flicker of something on Fox's face that was pleased.

"After dinner," Fox said. After a moment, he turned the slab of meat on his knife, and said, "Tell me about yourself. Your life. Everything you deem relevant."

Kid shrugged. "I'm not important. Not... relevant. Just some squirrelly kid Steyn sold to you."

Those blue, bright, deadly eyes weighed on him. Then Fox said, firmly, "I have cautioned you about obedience before. I regret that this must occur before dinner and after you have been quite good, however I do not repeat warnings. Remove your shirt."

Fox hooked the knife on the edge of a stone and left it sizzling over the coals. His attention was on Kid, whose heart seemed to want to murder him by pounding its way out of his ribcage as he lowered his suspenders again and unbuttoned his shirt.

Quietly, without much hope of success, he said, "I won't do it again, and I'm really so-"

"Remove it."

Kid swallowed, his heart still pounding in his throat, but did as he was told. The fire wasn't as warm as before and cold air blew across his back, reminding him only of how warm it was likely to be when Fox was finished beating it.

Fox removed his belt and tucked about a third of its length down, then cupped it in his hand. He nodded to Kid, and commanded him to lean down, palms flat.

The strap of the belt hit him hard, welting skin, bruising flesh, forcing his body forward. Fox was strict and precise. He deliberately angled the blows so that they criss-crossed Kid's back, the weight of the straps edged by the sting of welts that once or twice broke the skin, if the burn was anything to go by. Tears stood in Kid's eyes after the second snap of leather against skin, but he did his best not to snuffle or to cry out, grinding his jaw down till it ached all the way to his temple, biting hard at his lower lip.

The sound of it, loud and unrelenting, was nearly worse than the pain, even as that pain built red at the edges and spilled tears over, hot wet lines from his cheeks to the dust that he couldn't blink back. He hoped his hair, which was a little longer than he liked it, hid that-- hid _them_. It made it worse, deep in his belly, the crying. Made him helpless against it somehow, against each crack and lash and hurt.

His arms were shaking where they supported him, before it was over. But it ended, it _did end_ , and Fox replaced his belt around his waist and returned to the meat, which had cooked all the way done on one side in the time it had taken to reduce Kid to...

The tears wouldn't stop coming, and he was ashamed of himself. His nose felt full and stuffy, and he wanted to cry like a baby. Instead, he got his shirt back on, wincing at the feel of linen over the worst of the stripes.

He didn't think it was possible that anyone as smart as Fox hadn't noticed that he was crying, so he dashed the tears and their itchy tracks away with his sleeve cuff, fast and violent.

After only a few moments of silence, Fox pulled the hot, fresh meat off his knife with his fingers and held it out to Kid. Kid tried not to wince and quickly wiped the worst of the dirt off his hands on his jeans- the blood and grime from earlier had been washed mostly clean before he tended Fox's wound.

He accepted the meat, still slick with melted fat and so sizzling hot he nearly dropped it, and after a moment he tore into it hungrily. For some reason the taste, warm and savory and dripping juices, made his eyes water over again, and he had to stop and lean into his cuff, dripping food juices from the freshly bitten meal on to his pants.

"My question from earlier," Fox prodded after a moment. He still sounded entirely patient, but Kid knew it was not exactly an accurate assessment. His back could attest to that. Even though a wary glance showed Fox at his rest, carefully roasting a second slab of whatever animal he'd brought, Kid didn't relish the idea of a second whupping.

He took a big bite to stall as he tried to remember Fox's exact words. In this situation, he'd usually find it best to tell someone what he thought they wanted to hear, but he'd been asked to say what he thought was relevant. He chewed, unable even in his discomfort and fear not to half-melt at the rich and delicious flavor of simply cooked meat, swallowed, and then leaned back tentatively.

"My parents were farmers, not too far from here, but closer to Primm. When I was just a kid, maybe five or six years old, they sold me to a gambler who was passing through. The gambler meant to use me to pay off part of his debts to a very, very bad man who was, at that time at least, based in Freeside. Luckily for me, that very, very bad man had done something or other to piss off Jean-Baptiste Cutting, and even as a kid, that man was not the kind of psychopath you wanted to piss off. Everything went sideways, there was a heavy body count, and I was just a tiny little kid, able to hide places nobody else could. The second the screaming started, I ducked under the table and I ran."

It wasn't easy to find the words for this. It was truth Kid had lived with his entire life, but it wasn't a story he'd told anyone, hadn't spelled it out in words ever, not even to Rose. Saying it aloud took away its importance, somehow, made it sordid and just the same as anybody else's story. He took a few more bites and Fox was patient with him as he did, his blue eyes level and clear, unearthly as the fire reflected against their whites, waiting.

"I lived on the streets, hiding mostly from the thugs. The Kings weren't established much at that time, and neither was the Old Mormon Fort, things were lawless and pretty much shit for everybody. The only thing that was really the same was the gambling and the hookers, and after a few years on my own, a hooker picked me up. I guess she was feeling maternal. She was good to me for a while, till the world got to her. When she started getting not so nice, I found my own place and my own work. By then we'd drifted into Nipton, and that place gets its burrs in you. I kept pretty much out of sight and worked odd jobs. I'm also very good at black jack and poker, and Caravan at that, and if I need to sit down at a table and either win or lose to back up some conniving thief of a local gambler, I can do it, and come away with a handful of under-the-table caps."

"This doesn't bother you? Cheating those who come to town for pleasure?"

There was something in Fox's tone that was not mere curiosity, even though his posture didn't shift, casually turning his own portion of meat over the fire. But on the word 'cheating' had been something decidedly unfriendly, and Kid knew very well he ought to back-pedal, say he didn't like doing it, would never do it of his own volition. The only trouble with that instinct was that every single word of it was a lie, and he also did not think, and nor did his bruised, welted, screaming back, that lying to Fox was a good idea.

He took another bite, possibly his last, so he savored it as he chewed and swallowed. Then he met the other man's gaze across the flames, as steadily and firmly as he could. "No, it doesn't bother me," he said carefully. "The Mojave has a tax on stupidity, on trusting smiling strangers. For me, as a kid, it was taking food when I was starving, and finding it had been laced with poison because some people enjoy watching other people suffer. It brings joy to their black, shriveled little hearts. For some people, the tax is learning that every time you sit down at a gambling table, you're going to get screwed over, maybe by the house, maybe by some cheating scum lowlife gambler and his baby-faced associate."

"I see," Fox said mildly, and turned the slab of meat again.

Kid wolfed down about half the portion of food he'd been given, fast, because he was uncomfortable and scared and acting mostly at that moment on instinct. He knew he had grease across his face and did his best with his shirt sleeves, though his best with his shirt sleeves wasn't much. After a moment, he asked, "Is there anything else you want to know?"

"What do you feel right now? In all honesty."

It was the last question Kid wanted to answer, because even the words made him flush with humiliation, with helplessness. Because if Fox thought he'd be of use to the Legion, the combination of his cheating ways and this answer would probably teach him better, and Kid would be crucified before high noon tomorrow. But Kid remembered the prim, regretful look when he'd obfuscated before, the way that he thought people liked, and he knew that Fox wanted full disclosure. Fox wanted to sink the fingers of his mind into all the bloody, raw viscera of Kid's fucked up spirit, and he'd know if he was told a pleasant, well-meaning lie.

And he wouldn't like it.

"May I finish my meat first?" Kid asked quietly.

Fox nodded. The next few moments were silence except for tearing and chewing, the crackle of the coals, the hiss of fat into fire. When Kid had swallowed down the last of the meat, he wiped his greasy hands on his jeans and leaned forward, hunching unintentionally small against the fire.

"I... hurt," he started. "I feel hurt from being beaten. But I also feel ashamed, humiliated, because I'm _meant_ to be better than this. I shouldn't be here, shouldn't have been caught. So I feel like I deserved whatever you... anyway... I feel sorry for those Viper Gangers you... but I was really in awe of you, the way you looked, when you were in... And I'm grateful you beat me high up on my back so it didn't hit that bruise on my kidney..."

Fox smiled and made a faint noise that could have been stifled laughter.

"Is that--?" said Kid, "Is that good enough?"

"Yes," was his answer. Fox continued to cook his own meal. "I know that I said I would tell you of the Legion after dinner, but we were somewhat delayed by your requirement of discipline. Would you like to hear now?"

"I--" Kid said. "I-- yeah."

He watched the fire, watched the coals, like cracks of bright molten red in dark grey, the toothy fangs of flames jutted up over them. Fox's voice could be a balm, could be something soothing and beautiful, and when he spoke of something for which he had passion, it certainly was. Fox wrote a story for him, painted a mural of colors and ideals, as he told him about loyalty, about brotherhood, about a society honed in strength and raised with the mother's milk of determination of conquest. Warmth curled into the voice that Kid had believed could only sound absent or cold, transformed it when he spoke of Caesar, and it took a moment for Kid to realize that the man he had only heard referred to as 'see-zer' was the same as the man who Fox called 'KYE-ZAR.'

Fox paused, his meal completed, and ate it as roughly, with fingers and hard tearing teeth, as Kid had his own. After a few large bites, he said, "I expect to be obeyed and answered honestly. You will not use drugs or stims of any kind, or abuse alcohol, though depending on the job I assign you, once you are trained, you may imbibe if it is necessary. You will be something between an informant and an agent, so I do intend to train you, to teach you something of what the Legion is, so it is ingrained in your body. But you are not Legion, not unless Caesar proclaims it so, so I must also ensure you do not run at your first opportunity. You must understand this is what I do; there is no place within this world you could escape from me."

As those words, hope and despair, echoed and filled and settled hard and sore in the spaces of Kid's mind, Fox finished his own meal. He had a bag with him now and withdrew a cloth to clean his hands. He then moved to Kid's side of the fire, sitting next to him.

"One of us could keep watch," he said, "but I am a light sleeper. The fire is a deterrent to beasts, but a draw to bandits. We will let it bank and die, and I have my proper kit with me now, my proper weapons."

He indicated that Kid should lie down in the straight, more comfortable track nearest the fire, and then he laid down behind him. Kid's heart hammered and he couldn't believe how good it felt, after Fox took off his armor, even as his chest pressed against the welts from his beating. That even felt good, even made his cock twitch and stiffen, the slight abrasion reminded him of the pain and made it seductive, as if the ghost and echo of it was pleasurable when itself had been nothing but pain. Fox's cool cheek against his neck felt good too, his arm over Kid, his cloak like a blanket over them both.

Fox's breath against his ear, that cool whisper, made Kid shift, uncomfortable. Fox said, "If I wake quickly, pick up your gun but do not shoot until I command. I do not trust you to fight quite yet. Some of your instincts are correct. Follow them and keep safe."

Fox's hand smoothed along Kid's ribs and Kid couldn't help the slight exhale of want that winced out of him. Fox paused and then repeated the gesture, more slowly.

Kid's breath hitched and feathered.

Fox nudged the edge of his ear with his lips. "Tonight," he whispered, "we must be careful, because there are bandits here and the NCR may see my cloak. You cleave close to me and sleep as well as you can."

He lowered his head on his own lifted arm, and Kid did the same. It was so strange, the body against his, the heartbeat on his back, the aches and pains, the breath against his neck, that despite his exhaustion it took him a long time to lull into quiet. His mind kept going around and around, like some child's toy he remembered from long ago. Something wooden you pulled with a cord which whirled and whirled and whirled.

But it was warm by the edge of the fire, even as it banked, and it was warm under Fox's cloak, and despite the terror he still felt of the man, in his arms Kid felt safe. He drifted into the gray of half-conscious dreams, and held there, stirring once or twice, before the sky brightened into morning and sleep was no longer possible.

They had not been disturbed. Fox kicked out the last of the embers with his high, worn leather boots, and then he fetched the gun Kid had gotten from the Viper Ganger the previous day, put the safety on it and tucked it into Kid's jeans.

"We're not going far," he said. "I will check in with my vexillatio, and we will consider what you will be doing when I finish the business that I have in Nipton. That will begin tomorrow afternoon, my... sermon there."

"The money Joe thinks you're giving him," Kid said in a small voice.

Fox nodded. The expression that curved his thin lips showed teeth but it wasn't a smile. "You very nearly take pride in running and hiding. That won't do you much good now, I do not think. There are many things you need to learn, and we will not take you back to Nipton for the remainder of the time that filthy town has left to it. I will leave you with the forward camp, one or two men. One Decanus. Do not give them trouble, or you will undoubtedly be killed. You are not of so very much use."

Kid nodded, numbly.

Fox continued, "In all probability, I will send a few more Legionaries with some slaves from the town, in two or three days. Till then, if there is something you wish to learn, you could ask politely for the Decanus to have someone teach it to you. This would be a good use of your time."

Kid nodded again. "Do you think... anyone at the camp could maybe read?"

Fox's eyes sharpened, and he smiled. "No," he said, "but if you wish to learn to read, I will arrange it later. Fighting, stamina, weapon handling, these sort of things any Legionary could teach you well enough."

"Okay." Kid could feel the weight of the gun on the edge of his waist-band, and thought about one or two men, who weren't Fox. He thought of warmth curled against a bruised, aching back. He thought of a strange light in eyes bright and fierce like gas-flames in a stove.

He didn't like to think of what awaited the Mayor, when this man finished his business in town.

Kid just wished the word 'loyalty,' that bright clear thing that rang in the air when Fox said it, meant a fucking thing to him. He wished he had a clue how he was supposed to act in a Legion forward camp, waiting for the ax to fall on everything he'd ever known.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I remember correctly, the Decanus at the Forward Camp (where the Powder Gangers are in Booted!) is not named, so I have taken the liberty to name him. This chapter includes some Legion style training, which is canon-typical in being borderline sadistic.

'Not far' turned out to be further than Kid expected, though he wasn't tired or winded by the time he looked down upon the broad beige tents, arranged in something perhaps a circle and perhaps a square around the central fireplace. As their own fire had been scattered after it banked, this one too was just full of pale ashes, and the edges of the large tents had been rolled up to show thin pallets in meticulous lines, with the bedrolls or blankets tied into tight cyclinders and rested like pillows at their heads.

Several people in Legion armor, with the same crimson cloaks as Fox wore, but also some with headgear of one type or another and some with slight variations in the design or the keep of their armor, stood near the largest tent, one in which supplies could be seen on well-organized racks instead of bedrolls. Another stood near the fire, while yet two more ranged the length of the camp.   Huge long-haired dogs, bigger and shaggier than the wild dogs Kid was used to seeing, a deep auburn brown in their coat, walked alongside those men. One of the dogs, the nearest to where he and Fox descended, lifted its huge head and sniffed the air, then let out a brief truncated howl before it quieted.

Most of the men, and they were all men, all above average in size and well-muscled beneath their gear, were downwind of the camp, engaged in some sort of weapon training. Sixty percent appeared to be doing drills, although Kid had only the vaguest idea of what 'drills' were or what they looked like. They were in synchronized movement, anyway. The remaining forty percent were fighting each other, with the exception of one large man in a helmet covered with black and white long plume feathers, stood to the side. Though the wind didn't carry sounds to them yet, from the way his head tilted and his arm moved, Kid figured that man was giving the orders.

Fox led him down into the camp, and with the exception of some sharp glances his way, they weren't challenged. If Fox moved near enough another Legionary or glanced his way, that man would greet him with, "Ave," or "True to Caesar." Fox responded verbally to some of these greetings in his quiet voice, but only nodded sharply to others.

Kid was struck at once by the thoroughness of the Legion's discipline. He held Fox in a certain awe, and certainly, the man's presence was brighter, sharper and colder than that of the others around. Kid didn't think he imagined the wary politeness that caused everyone to greet him personally. But the others all stood with military posture, the muscles lax if they were not training or working at something. The entire length of the camp, which was quite large, had been cleared of small rocks, scrub brush or tumbleweeds and the sand raked smooth.

The scent the breeze carried was wild and raw, at odds with the neat tents and bedrolls. He could also now hear the low growls and grunts of the men fighting, not a single cry from the ones who received heavy fists or hopefully-blunted machetes in their training. He could hear the commands of the man in the unique helmet, his voice deep and powerful, vibrated through Kid's body. Most of what he said was not a word in any language Kid had heard, but the Legionaries snapped to change their activity when he spoke.

Once, one didn't, perhaps distracted by their approach, and the tall man in the helmet said something else, something Kid could not hear. One man was drawn off then, already stripping his armor at the torso, and Kid winced to himself to see the whipping post being readied.

Compared to that, his own back was very comfortable, _thank you_. He hoped he hadn't been responsible for it, his own presence as strange and at odds among all these people of similar culture and intent.

The commander turned from his troops just as they reached a distance of about ten feet or so. "Vulpes Inculta," he said, clearing greeting Fox. The words were clear, the syllables as distinct as they were alien. "Ave. True to Caesar."

Kid acknowledged to himself that the name, complicated and somewhat harsh, had a quality that fit the man who stood beside him better than 'Mr. Fox' did, but he doubted he could articulate it properly after only the one listen, and so he thought he'd stick to 'sir.' He also noted that despite being very clearly in command, marked as visibly different and superior to those around him, this man with his dark and bright plumes was very polite in his tones.

He also noticed that though Fox,- _Vulpes Inculta_ ,- responded with very nearly the same words, and his tones were nearly always very polite at any time, there was not a hint of deference in his posture as he addressed the other, whom he called by Decanus Ursus.

Kid remembered Vulpes Inculta had referred to the head of the camp, at least that would be left behind with him, as the Decanus, and ducked his head on instinct as the eyes behind the brown leather-rimmed goggles turned to him.

The Decanus did not ask a question, but Vulpes Inculta provided an answer anyway, with his customary smoothness. "An asset to the frumentarii which I intend to train in the days to come. I will leave him with the remaining guard, so he has been instructed what to expect should he cause complaint."

Decanus Ursus nodded. "How is he addressed?"

Vulpes Inculta tilted his head in Kid's direction. "Steyn called you 'Kid.' Is this..?"

Kid nodded, feeling his fair skin color at the admission. He'd grown so used to the entire community knowing him by the name that he forgot that most people expected to find him secretly a Billy or a Thaddeus. "It's the only name I remember, sir."

Vulpes Inculta lifted his shoulders in a very small approximation of a shrug. For now, most of his poignard attention was focused upon Decanus Ursus, and Kid was entirely unsure how he felt about that. He didn't like Vulpes' attention, it made him uncomfortable and prickly and small, but he was also alone in a strange place and he didn't know what was expected of him, so he wound up fidgeting, kicking his shoes lightly on the surface of the sand, as the other two spoke over him. Like an animal, a child... or a slave.

But they didn't talk around him very long. Vulpes Inculta mentioned what he had before, that he would take his vexillatio, whatever that was, back to Nipton, and send some men back with slaves in the next few days. Lance-sharp blue eyes struck sideways at Kid, then, where he was attempting to subtly remember and repeat the shapes of the foreign words, and the cold voice commanded: "Decanus Ursus and I have matters to discuss. Did you not have a request for the Decanus, or is it your intent to be of no use until I return?"

Kid's cheeks burned even more brightly. He wanted to respond with hot words. He wanted to tell this man, this Vulpes Inculta, precisely how he felt about being of use to other people, how little he cared what these _monstrous_ men thought of him, and just take the beating that followed and curl up with it, in a corner, like an old dog who'd lost the only master he gave a damn for.

He hadn't even, he remembered, in the sudden flash, the few seconds between the uncustomarily harsh words from Fox and his own reply, been commanded to be polite to Vulpes Inculta, though he had been warned about his tone and his word choice.

His lips parted, and Vulpes must have seen something like defiance or anger in Kid's expression, because his own eyes narrowed, and Kid remembered darkness stirring at the depths of a dark lake, remembered bodies broken and left on poles to die of thirst or be gnawed upon like living carrion, and he recalled that he had a sense of self-preservation after all.

He said, "Yes, sir," to Vulpes Inculta and turned to Decanus Ursus. "Ah... sir," he continued, awkward, because he didn't trust himself to address the Decanus correctly either, and was humiliated by it, "may I learn some of the physical ways of the Legion while I'm here, so I can... be of... use," he heard his voice go dark on the word and blanched inwardly, "... to... forgive me, I'm not sure I'll say this correctly--" He made his best attempt at the name of the man he knew as Fox.

Ursus smirked. He glanced at Vulpes, who corrected the pronunciation with his usual velvet clarity.

Kid repeated it dutifully, and wasn't corrected again.

The Decanus looked him up and down critically, and though Kid couldn't see his eyes, he expected from the set of the lips and jaw that they would be glittering with amusement, and not amusement of the kind variety.

"Very well," he said. "Strip to the waist and walk with Three Birds, there-" One deep brown, extended finger gestured to the man at the far end of the camp, who had the dog at his side. "-until it is no longer his shift. If he detects danger, run back to me."

Kid stared at the dull reddish dust around his shoes. _Why do I even put the damn shirt back on anymore?_ he thought, as he once more slipped down his suspenders and unbuttoned the linen, now filthy anyway from blood and from lying in the dust. Every movement worked the bruises on his back, which wasn't new exactly, as walking had too, but now they would be exposed to the sky. In the distance, the first lash of the whip cracked, so very loud, and he flinched at his own thoughts, how they returned to the previous night.

Wetness touched his eyelashes and he blinked hard and kept himself back from letting it get out of hand, letting his eyes truly dampen again. It was only that he knew what the Decanus had seen; he already knew what Ursus meant by giving him this job. His skin was fair, already burnt on his face. Walking for as long as he could in the hot sun would wear him out, burn him all down his shoulders and back, maybe even make him collapse.

And to run back if there was a sign of trouble... _Well_ , Kid thought, if there was a sign of trouble, he better hope it came fast, before Kid's running days were headed in the opposite direction.

"Thank Decanus Ursus for this opportunity," Vulpes Inculta suggested.

Kid muttered, "Thank you sir." He didn't even try to keep his ill temper out of his voice, but neither of the other men commented on it. He was afraid for the first few minutes, pulse quick and vicious at his chest and his throat, as he hurriedly tied the shirt around above his belt and stepped on down to where he'd been instructed to go. A moment later, a Legionary peeled from the group and followed him.

 _Dead,_ Kid thought. _I was rude and I'm going to be--_

But the Legionary only informed Three Birds of the Decanus' command and then returned. Kid set into a silent rhythm beside the other man, and tried to think of the dog, or the bright clear tents, or even of old stories that he had been told, instead of how much, _how much_ , **_how much_ ** he hated the cannibal Mojave sun.

He remembered, with a faint trill of hilarity that bubbled under his ribcage and threatened to boil over into absolute hysteria, how he had believed he hated that sun only the day before. Now the weight he remembered through his clothes was a weight of heat, of heat and nothing but heat, feathers of burning that grew and prickled, a sensation on his skin that didn't die or fade but remained bright, as though he'd put his shoulders into the convection of an oven.

He couldn't remember ever having sweated so much. He was accustomed to staying indoors or going to ground by day, to avoid others, and now trickles of liquid seemed to drip from everywhere, and sometimes a cool breeze would make the sweat welcome, particularly on his face and his neck, but on his back, where the untreated welts from the night before burned and stung bare in the faint sand that drifted on the air, the sweat made it burn more fiercely, and then itch as it dried.

And it was pressure, too. The sun was a pressure. He hadn't liked walking in it at the best of times, but now the energy seemed to wash out of him with his body's liquids, leaving nothing behind it except for heat. The only way to keep going was to focus on one thing after another, to keep his mind alert and agile, and not allow it to wallow on everything that he hated of this moment, how desperately he wanted to be away.

Three Birds was, like Vulpes Inculta, a little smaller than the average Legionary. His skin was a clay red-brown, his short shorn hair darker brown. He wasn't old, not nearly, yet already crow's feet had grown around his brown eyes, as though he'd shrunken somehow, down to the harsh planes of his handsome features, and left a little remnant behind to remind everyone of his diminishing.

The dog, whose name, he had been informed upon asking, was Cinis, had a wild musky smell and huge paws, and growled at times low in her throat for reasons Kid couldn't fathom. She wasn't leashed and walked along beside Three Birds in an easy lope, neither of them terribly concerned if one outpaced the other.

Three Birds would answer questions if they could be answered in two or three words and if there weren't a lot of them. He'd quickly made it clear that he was required to be alert, to keep his eyes and ears open.

"Cinis' senses are better than mine for simple things," he said, in the longest speech he was ever to give. "But it is my duty to notice subtle discrepancies. Distant smoke, strange patterns, this sort of thing. I will not be distracted."

Kid accepted that and stopped talking much. He tried, in fact, to do the same sort of thing that the other man was doing. As they made their winding loops along the outskirts of the camp, back inside and through, around along different winding paths, he tried to remember every detail that he saw, so if there were scuffs on a particular outcropping, he would remember it.

He tried to watch the sky, but quickly found his hatred of the brightness,- he'd lost his sunglasses in Steyn's office when his forehead was skinned open,- and the day, made watching the dull mocking blue for any signals or changes entirely unwelcome.

He memorized the shading in Cinis' fur, and the notch in the dog's ear. He memorized the angle at which the tents were closed. He memorized the sound of the tread of Three Birds' boots. His own pace, he couldn't keep proper track of. An hour or so earlier he had started to trudge back or stagger forward. He thought the sky was darkening but didn't know how much longer was ahead. He had to think about things other than his own skin, or he was going to...

Three Birds had paused, ahead of him, and even in his state, Kid heard it a moment later. Gunshots. In the clear wide desert, even in the bowl of the rocks, sound traveled a good distance, and Kid was not sure if it was close enough, the sound of it, to be important. There was the _ratt-a-tatt_ of something automatic, and slower, deeper, throaty pops from a large caliber handgun. And... something else, he couldn't quite-

Not only had Three Birds stopped, and had his head cocked toward the distant gunshots, but Cinis stopped as well, turned, growling. Dogs' hair didn't stand on end, Kid remembered, but somehow the massive hound gave the impression of having grown larger, her teeth longer.

Kid's stomach seemed to drop in his gullet. It also appeared to be made of ice. It didn't matter if this was anything, now. It didn't matter if the conflict was far away and never spilled into the camp. If the dog and the scout responded to this, it was a sign of trouble.

He turned and sprinted down into the camp. He tripped, once, went over across his shoulder, briefly wrenching a muscle up along his arm, but got back up and ran forward again. The thin soled shoes which seemed so useful on the rocks were now useless, finding no purchase on smooth sand. His run was more of a forward trip, and everyone he'd ever known and everyone in the camp would laugh to see him fail at running, some blistered half-cooked gecko waddling across the landscape.

By now, most of the camp was gone, and there was silence where the drills had been. The sky truly had deepened to an ember gray, and a fire was kindled, small but streaking deep charcoal in a scarf against the air.

When Kid reached Decanus Ursus he could barely speak, but rattled out information about the gunshots, what he knew of them, and the reaction of the Legionary and the dog with him.

He could scarcely stay on his feet, as Ursus questioned him further. How certain was he of what guns he heard? How many? What else had he observed? He replied as best he could, and then started when a bottle of water was thrust under his nose, where his greying vision focused on the Decanus' boots.

"Drink that," Ursus growled. The big man's gaze went up, past Kid, scanned the horizon. "Get near the fire. Dress if you wish. You've obeyed well."

Kid could scarcely think. What about the danger? The gunshots? The--?

The Decanus tore the bottle back out of Kid's grasp, uncapped it, and shoved it at him again, practically pushing it into Kid's teeth. "Drink it," he repeated, in his deep rough voice that seemed always half snarl.

Kid drank willingly, and at the first tip of the sweet clear liquid against his tongue, needed more, and began to work his throat, chugging faster than he'd ever dared finish an entire bottle of water. He continued to expect, in whatever rational portion of his brain that was nervous and embarrassed and halfway-hostile, that the water would be yanked from him at any moment, but Ursus allowed him to finish the entire bottle.

Hard fingers dug into his badly burned shoulder and forced him upright, and he almost gagged at the feel of it.

"There will be food in an hour. A cot has been laid in the supply tent," the Decanus pointed. "Someone will be in with wet paper for your skin. Lie and wait."

Kid supposed he'd acted strangely enough that sitting at the fire with his clothes on was off the table. He obeyed numbly, because his thoughts were still full of gunshots and how could the Decanus be so calm and what were they, but also because he was tired and the water set still in his stomach and his skin felt like bonfire.

His chest was nearly as bad as his back, but wasn't bruised, so he fell forward on the cot and only gasped and coughed a little at the feel of the rough mattress on his skin. He wanted more water. He spent a few minutes dreaming about it, half awake, before the soothing feel of something damp and cool on his skin made him stir to consciousness, eyelids fluttering. He thought he might have made a small eager noise, like a baby animal about to receive mother's milk.

The papers, if that were what they were, smelled utterly foul. But of course, Kid thought vaguely, if they wasted a whole bottle of decent water on him, they'd use the stuff from the river to cool his burns. At least nothing stung at all.  In contrast, it felt very good.

It didn't entirely stop the hurt but by now, everything hurt. Every muscle, his skin, everything.

The Legionary who brought the papers brought food, and it smelled good, a warm counterpoint to the sour, spoiled smell of the bandages. But Kid couldn't rouse himself, and the man didn't press him hard.

In the night, the wind in the Mojave sounded like hopeless wailing, and Kid thought of Nipton again, vaguely, numbly, before exhaustion uncurled it's dark blanket and unceremonious covered him over.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence, since we deal with the Nipton Lottery. And blood.

The days bled into each other. For much of the second one, Kid was on a cot in the supply tent, with papers over his back and a fever. He kept remembering things in strange and disjointed fragments that suggested that he was occasionally delirious, although if it were not for the bitter, bright orange powder one of the Legionaries had poured over his tongue before giving him his water ration that morning, he did not think he would have been. But these things kept sticking at him: Jean-Baptiste Cutting's smile, a dark blood-hungry thing that didn't belong on the face of a child. Vulpes Inculta's eyes, pale as the gunmetal sky before a storm but much colder. The way Joe Steyn would pat his shoulder, all chummy, as if he were some jovial uncle. The dead woman he'd come across when he was a child and the way she smelled. The screams that rose up from the walls around the camp while he stared into the fire.

When his fever broke, he realized how badly he stank. The papers that had cooled his still furiously painful but now peeling sunburn had been soaked in river water, which was rank to say the least, and he'd sweated badly and not washed for more than twenty-four hours. Kid felt like a newborn colt, so unsteady on his feet, but he supported himself against one of the shelving units and then tracked on numb feet outside. It was already past noon, the sky dimming in its brightness.

Kid didn't want to bother the Decanus, so he asked the guard in charge at the tent, the same one who had given him the orange powder, where he might be able to wash up. He asked as politely as he could. The Legionary seemed the nicest of all the ones he'd met so far, genuinely concerned about Kid's well-being, and he beamed at the well-mannered question. "There's a big pot back in there. Fill it with dirty water and boil it, then you can wash up. We have some dried crushed flowers you can use to smell better if you want."

Kid thanked him and got to work. When he was stripped and washed, he stood naked in the shadow of the tent, not caring who saw him. He hurt, but he could breathe and didn't breathe a funk. He looked up at the sky and down at his stinking clothes. He thought about just walking around like that, naked, but remembered how badly the sun had hurt him with only his torso bare. He picked up his clothes, and caught the guard's eye.

"The Decanus says you can wear a Legionary _chilton_ , if you don't wear anything else. Except your shoes."

Kid nodded, unable to properly decide if he was grateful or furious that this had been considered, planned for him. He still accepted what they called a _chilton_ , which looked to him like a knee length sleeveless red dress with tattered edges. It smelled like wood smoke and yucca, which was a vast improvement over his own sick.

It seemed only right he go to the Decanus then, to see what Ursus suggested he do next. He tried to keep the acid that filled those thoughts away from his expression or his tone as he moved through the camp to find the tall, dark-skinned man.

He stood there for several minutes, probably more than fifteen, as Ursus spoke to three of his men and instructed them on how they were to proceed. Most of the conversation was in that lyrical, romantic language that the Legion used, and Kid could not follow it. However, there were one or two sections in English that allowed him to realize two things: firstly, that the men were being prepped for a journey to a nearby NCR station, and secondly, that Ursus intended for Kid to hear this. It was a test. Also a test, leaving him waiting so long. He made himself be calm and patient and obedient despite being shaky on his feet, despite how his shoulders, chest and back burned.

Finally, Decanus Ursus turned to him. "Back for more training?" he asked simply, though there was a cruel curve to his lip.

Kid ducked his head and mentally pummeled himself. He said, "Yes, sir."

He didn't know how he was quite sure, beneath the goggles and the constant smirk, that his answer pleased Ursus, and yet he knew it did. There was a pregnant pause, then the Decanus ordered: "Get some food, and while it settles, have Tredecimus show you how we tend our armor and weapons. There should be several sets in the supply tent that need mending and machetes to sharpen. After the sun is down, I want you on patrol again. Walk the camp till the sky lightens, then eat again, and bed yourself."

"Yes, sir," Kid said.

"And?" Decanus Ursus was probably raising an eyebrow, somewhere underneath the sand-glotted goggles.

"Er," said Kid. "Thank you, sir." He half-assed a salute and something like a bow and headed toward the fire to get some food.

  
That day and half the one after it were made of learning. Kid had already had a basic idea of how to sharpen a knife or work a needle. Now he learned to mend armor straps, to pound out divots, to put a razor's edge on a machete, to make a hearty stew or dry or boil herbs to form a sort of soap. He reached the point he was no longer winded by walking for hours at a time, though his muscles always hurt him, still recovering from the shock. He learned some unarmed combat moves too, though he thought he received more bruises and wrenched muscles than real knowledge he might use in a pinch.

After the midday meal that third day, two Legionaries returned to the camp. With them, they took two Powder Gangers, obvious in their bright blue prison uniforms, but laden with wrist and ankle chains. The men in chains looked dead, like they weren't even seeing the world anymore. They trudged dutifully to the center of the camp and then knelt by the fire.

Kid looked into the eyes of one, and flinched, and then looked away again. He didn't look like a Powder Ganger anymore. All that flash and vigor, the bitter vindictiveness, the burning temper, was snuffed out like a candle flame. The man looked like he didn't know where he was anymore, or even who he was.

Kid swallowed and tried not to think of how bad it must be in Nipton. He tried not to think but he couldn't. He thought about asking the Powder Gangers, but fraternizing wasn't really encouraged, and they both looked so broken he would have felt like he was kicking a bad open wound if he asked about it.

So he waited, and did as he was told.

  
On the fifth day, he couldn't stand to look at them anymore. They made him sick. The Legion made him sick. His own fucking culpability made him sick. He paced until he felt like he might lash out at a simple word, and then he just left the camp, walked out, expecting a cry to go up or a bullet to snap through his flesh, but nothing. There was nothing. Probably, Decanus Ursus was laughing.

He was heading to Nipton.

There had been a billow of black smoke in that direction since the first day. The air smelled bad, the closer he got. Brittle, acrid smoke, like plastic or rubber burning. When he got close to the railroad tracks, he could see the flames, still bright tongues as high as the shells of buses and vans lined up to barricade the community.

And it didn't just smell like burned rubber, it smelled like charred flesh. Like something else that he didn't have a name for that was worse. He didn't want to keep walking further, past the tattered bright red emblem of the Legion bull, past the no-man's land of fire and smoke. But his feet kept moving, one before the other, numb and unresponsive to the shrieking in his head.

I don't want to see this. I don't. I don't. But still he walked further.

He passed the city's welcome sign. There were big pipes set up on either side there, with bleeding severed heads shoved on to them. Every head was someone he knew. One of them was Rose. He remembered her pushing him behind her skirt to protect him when he was just a kid, and stared at the lax lips that looked like a waxen mask, when they would smile all tight and crooked, something sweet that hated itself for its sweetness.

Cramps hit his stomach immediately, he gasped as wave after wave of vomit and bile forced itself out of him more intensely than he believed it ever could, even when he'd been poisoned. He left himself bent over, gasping, afterward, till he was sure he could breathe, sure that the cramps that twisted and burned in his gut could not throw up anything more but a coat of bile over his palate.

He didn't need to see anymore. Rose's head on a pike. She was the only one he really gave a fuck about, even if she had stopped giving a fuck about him. But his feet still weren't listening. He kept cataloguing the heads, this person, that person. And when he turned past the General Store to the main street, there were crosses raised on either side of the street, and men were lashed there, dead or dying. Too close to dying now to be saved, probably.

He couldn't vomit anymore. He felt light and completely weird. He didn't feel like himself. Like he wasn't making himself walk further, past these dead men who were still breathing, he didn't want to look into each of their eyes but he did it anyway. He wasn't making himself remember the names of every head he saw on every pike, or when he recognized Vulpes Inculta, despite the dog skin he wore over his short-shorn hair, it wasn't Kid driving, he didn't think, when he picked up one of the machete shoved into the blood-soaked ground and swung it as hard as he could at Vulpes Inculta's neck.

A cry went up, but Vulpes threw up his hand, even as he dodged back. "No," he snarled at his vexillatio, and then he snapped forward, grasped the machete by the back of the blade, ripping it out of Kid's suddenly lax and numb fingers and throwing it aside. "This is why I took this one," he said flatly, as in manner of explanation to his men. "He does this out of _loyalty_."

Then he struck Kid with a vicious backhand that clouded his eye, swelled bright thick pain across his cheek and cheekbone, cut his skin, and left him sprawling in the dirt. He stalked over, grabbed Kid by the hair and wrenched him upright. "I told you to _wait for me_ ," he hissed. His arm twisted, dragging Kid around by the hair to throw him against the City Hall steps.

"If you wish to observe," Vulpes Inculta said, his tone so icy that Kid wanted to rub his arms against the cold, "then you may sit there quietly and observe as I conclude the lottery."

It was only then that Kid realized not everyone was dead. There were two men,- _only two_ ,- who stood in front of the reeking flames from the pile of burning tires, next to the nearest cluster of pikes. They both looked so strange that Kid had not even noted them as living men before. They looked mad. They looked desperate and locked up and drained utterly of all hope.

Vulpes Inculta held out his hand and a Legionary handed him a slip of paper. Vulpes read out the number, his lips twitched downward, then he made a gesture, one thumb down. Immediately, two Legionaries dragged one of the two remaining men, the Powder Gangers, forward. He howled and struggled, suddenly lifelike again, but it did nothing. He howled and screamed as they put him face down in the dirt and beat his legs with clubs and bats until they were of no use.

Kid's face was wet with tears. He'd tried to get up, to do something, and been shoved down again, and now he felt utterly lifeless. It wasn't as if he didn't think the Powder Ganger might have done something like that to someone else. He knew this one. They called him 'Boxcars' because it had been his idea to hang out by the old railroad boxcars and kill, rape or strip any traveller who passed by.

It didn't make listening to his helpless, childlike keening any easier.

Kid felt numb as Vulpes Inculta read the last lottery number, even though it was obvious who was the winner. He felt numb as Oliver Swanick screamed his blissful, safe way out of the town. That dead, unhappy, sick in the stomach numbness stayed with him until Vulpes gripped him by the elbow and dragged him bodily into the old Nipton hotel.

He used to live here. The first thing he noticed were the dead NCR officers.

He didn't have much time to notice them, however, before he was pressed against the peeling wallpaper, Vulpes Inculta's hard body against his, the fingers of his right hand pressed into Kid's throat and a knife's edge just short of slicing the skin in his left.

"Are you lost to me?" he asked in that soft, strange, deadly voice. "Has seeing what I made of your degenerate, whorish little town ruined you? Are you broken now?"

Tears were streaming down Kid's face again. He hated that, so he snarled. He bared his teeth. He slammed his knees out against Vulpes, despite knowing he could have his throat cut. "I did everything you asked of me," he hissed. "Everything. And you- and I see-"

"I did not intend for you to see it. That is why you obey." Vulpes' eyes widened, and it seemed as if those words actually made sense to him, which made Kid even angrier.

His snarl deepened. "Oh, _fuck_ you. I obey so I don't know that you murdered everyone I knew in the most sadistic way you could think of? What are people to you? Numbers? Dolls?"

There had been something bright, livid, almost angry, under Vulpes Inculta's gaze and it settled, dulled now. He pulled back. His eyes were cool and almost lidded as he lowered his hand from Kid's throat. "You did as you were asked?" he said gently.

Kid didn't know what to do. He needed the wall for support. He smoothed a hand over the ache on his throat and whimpered a little. "Fuck you," he said again, softly, but the tone was an affirmative.

Vulpes straightened and glanced at the door behind him. "I have one duty more to fulfill here in Nipton. And you have punishment coming for your disobedience. A wise man wouldn't compound it by wandering even further from where I want you."

Then he kissed Kid lightly on the lips.

Kid almost didn't believe it had happened. It must have been his imagination. That numb, dull ache that had spread through everything after he vomited his guts up in the red-caked dirt. The same strange dream that made him throw a machete swipe at the most terrifying man he had ever met. Now he imagined the memory, the soft imprint, of lips upon his own.

He licked his lips and tasted agave honey as Vulpes Inculta exited the hotel, the door slammed shut behind him.

Kid stood near the wall, but could not do so for long. The place reeked of death. Bodies, rotting indoors in the desert heat for almost a week. The meaty, putrid stink made his stomach roil and churn. He had to have fresh air. He barreled outside quickly, but stood outside the house in the sunshine for a while, unclear why he did so. Maybe because a wise man wouldn't compound his punishment.

Kid laughed under his breath. Everyone in his town was fucked up or hanging from a pole. How selfish would it be of him to care how he was treated by their murderer?

And yet he remembered a kiss, remembered the press of flesh against flesh under a cloak, a hand smoothed over his ribs, cool water against sticky blood. He remembered yellow powder, and the smell of dried herbs, and an almost-smile as he finished his rounds. Nobody had ever-

The vexillatio were heading his way, treading simply and carefully, with no particular rush, two dogs loping easily at either side. Vulpes Inculta stood tall in his animal skin, in his armor, but when he drew close the faint, meaningless smile that had curved his lips dropped away, and he snapped his fingers sharply for Kid to attend him.

Kid started to move forward, then shook his head.

Vulpes' eyes weren't visible under the authority glasses, but he stalked out of position, grabbed the front of Kid's _chilton_ , and dragged him along. Kid thought about trying to fight back, but the pure acid in what he saw under the lidded gaze made him quiescent.

When Vulpes let him go, he walked alongside, leaden steps set one after another. Once or twice he fell behind and a Legionary jostled him. Vulpes Inculta did not caution them.

Once, Vulpes paused and plucked out two dull pale orange roots from the ground. Xander root. "Promising," he murmured to himself, and then shot Kid a cool look that sent buckets of ice water dancing down his spine.

When they reached the forward camp, it was dark, but Vulpes, and Kid with him, did not stop there. Vulpes pushed him forward, and without a word to the vexillatio or to Decanus Ursus or to anyone in that camp, they cut further along the wastes, Vulpes setting an unforgiving speed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, an apology. I know I promised this chapter several weeks ago, but I was forced to rewrite it. It wasn't doing what it needed to do- namely, to balance the brutality with some semblance of Kid and Vulpes coming to understand each other, and I hope this version has done so a little better.  
> _  
> Second, thank you so much to everyone who has read this fic, who has given kudos, and who has commented! The comments on this fic have been some that made me so utterly happy , that re-invigorated my sense of writing. And the kudos, the views, everything makes me so immensely proud. You are all wonderful and I adore you.   
> -  
> Thirdly, warnings for this chapter: I don't think there are any new ones. It's continued violence and angst. Perhaps a bit more exploration of Vulpes' feelings for Kid, and vice-versa.

When they passed the camp without a glance or a word, Kid thought this would be some sort of long forced march. Some stumbling exhaustion through the desert, as night encroached and the thin clothing he wore, already sticky with sweat, became too cold to keep him from shivering. The disassociated, blank, numb feeling didn't last more than the first fifteen minutes, and then everything crashed down on Kid at once. The town. Rose's head on the pole. The crosses. His burned skin and itching welts and the bruised heaviness at the side of his face, the tight rawness where the back of Vulpes Inculta's hand had split the skin.

The smiles he'd exchanged with Legionaries. The food he'd eaten. The work he'd done. It all made him implicit in Vulpes Inculta's monstrosities. He stopped suddenly, dropped to his knees. There was a keening cry inside him that wanted out, but he clenched his jaw on it, digging his fingernails into the skin above his eyebrows, his eyes closed tightly. He swallowed that cry, and it felt slick and slimy in his stomach, like a worm.

Fingers tangled roughly in his hair and yanked him upright. It was like a bolt of fire across his scalp, and he gritted his teeth against the involuntary sound that the pain wanted him to make. Blindly, still clenching one hand in a curled claw against his face, he struck out wildly. Ursus had taught him one or two things about unarmed combat, so he at least put a decent amount of weight behind the blow. He felt it connect, surprisingly solidly, though against hard muscle and bone.

Vulpes Inculta hissed, and Kid suddenly found himself on his knees again. The hard impact of a boot to the back of his leg stung, and the hand in his hair stung worse. Then the Legionary released his grip, in favor of kicking Kid over on to his side and pressing his boot on to Kid's cheek. His skin was still sensitive from the sunburn, so he hadn't shaved in a while, and had a scraggly stubble growth that pricked back under the heavy, worn treads of the boot. It pressed, until Kid didn't just feel the sandy, rough rubber against his skin, but also the pain of weight grinding against his jaw and cheekbone. He heard the whisper of leather as Vulpes Inculta removed his belt and whimpered to himself.

This position meant the beating would be mostly over his arm and ribs, and that would hurt much more than the back had, with more potential to damage something. But rather than the heavy snap of leather against his skin, the harsh lash he expected, he felt the leather, cooler than his own flushed skin, curl around his neck. Vulpes bent over him, got the strap of the belt through the buckle and pulled it till Kid could feel it around his neck like a collar. A rather _tight_ collar.

Vulpes pulled it tighter, and Kid felt the pressure turn into a bruise, felt it cut across his windpipe till he couldn't breathe properly. He could still breathe, but it was rough and shallow.

"Would you like me to begin now?" Vulpes Inculta asked. His voice was the same silken, graceful thing it always was, but it had a seething edge to it, something like the sound of steam from a boiling kettle, that spoke to Kid of how angry he truly was. "Here? In the middle of the desert? _I can_."

Kid wanted to scream at him, to punch his ankle, to somehow psychically force the squirming, disgusting feelings that had been wrenching their way through him since Nipton past that frozen, architecture face, past the black glasses and the iceberg eyes, to whatever might be inside. Instead he felt tears slip from his eyes. Felt the rage of it transform into pure emotion inside him, make him shiver, shake even against the pressure of the boot on his face and the belt around his neck. Felt the salt of his own tears, hot but cooling fast, dripping down the side of his nose and across the orbit of his eye back to his ear. Felt the sob start to form in his chest and stifled it, but couldn't stop the bright, hot burst of pain that made his eyes clench shut, made more tears fall, or the snuffle that appeared out of nowhere. Childish, stupid. It would only get him laughed at, or told a Legion asset never behaved with such weakness.

What he felt instead was a fingertip sifting his tears. He half opened his eyes, blinked to dispel the remaining blurriness, and saw Vulpes rubbing the pad of his thumb over his index finger, spreading the tears. He had let go of the end of the belt.

Kid licked his lips, swallowed against the pain in his throat, and said quietly, "What's wrong?"

Vulpes sighed, and pulled the dog skin hood from his head, raking his fingernails through his short hair in a soothing gesture that had begun to seem familiar to Kid. Vulpes Inculta had so few tells that he was human, was anything but an anomalous monster among the monsters of the Mojave. But that rake of fingernails across short-shorn hair was one of them; it told that he wasn't always calm and composed.

"I did not intend for you to see that," he said. His voice was as cool as always. Lacking gentleness or generosity, but with a softness that compelled one to believe that violence was not on the horizon, even when it very clearly was.

Kid raised one hand, tentatively, and when Vulpes Inculta did not react, he scrubbed his palm over his face and got himself upright, on his ass, knees curled behind him. "So what you intended," he said, his voice raw, trying not to get angry or snap but finding that pushing this poison out of him and into the atmosphere was necessary, "was to use me. Was to make me in your Legion's image, while you systematically tortured and murdered everyone I know, everyone I care for?"

"You should have obeyed me and stayed where you were."

"Are you _listening_ to yourself?" It came out more fiercely than Kid intended, more raw. The volume made him flinch, but he didn't back down. He licked his lips again. They felt sticky, and raw, and stung a little when his tongue slipped back behind his teeth. "I should have obeyed you while you were betraying me? Making me into your thing so I didn't know what you were doing behind my back?"

"You will not speak to me that way," Vulpes Inculta said flatly.

Through the swimming of tears that wouldn't stop, wouldn't blink free, Kid caught the familiar gaslight glint of those pale blue eyes and thought he ought to stop. And then he didn't. "Why? _Why_ won't I?" he snarled. "I'm already earned a punishment. Why shouldn't I just get it all out and take what is coming for me? Because I want to know."

His hand pressed into the ground beneath him. Sand and small rocks pressed into his skin, burning and uncomfortable, as he shifted his weight, got up on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He felt the end of Vulpes' belt smack against his chest, lightly, as he stood. The buckle was still cool against his throat, not yet warmed by his body heat. "I want to know why you thought you could save me? Just me. Just little ol' me. Put me in a camp. Have 'em teach me. And then just fucking ruin everything I know. Put my mother's head on a pole. And then, when I see it all, when I throw a well deserved machete at your skull, you goddamn _kiss_ me?! I want to know!"

His breath came in fast, helpless gasps. Adrenaline was high. He wasn't feeling his wounds, except the deepest and most recent ones. He'd stepped up to Vulpes, though he wasn't as tall as the Legionary, and his heart still pounded in his chest, _bam-bam-bam-bam-bam_ , like some small animal.

Vulpes Inculta tilted his head. There was nothing at all in his eyes or face to tell Kid what was coming. He was architecture again, a cold front on the horizon. Breath seethed its way between his taut lips and then his fingers curled toward a fist. Kid flinched again, but no blow fell. "That is what happened to me," Vulpes said. "To my tribe. Degenerates, not otherwise of any use to the Legion. But I, I caught the eye of Caesar. Of the Malpais Legate. So I was bundled into a Legion cloak and my tribe was put to the torch, pinned to the rock walls behind their camp. Because that is what must happen to filthy, ruthless degenerates in the world to come. They must suffer and die. It does no good to mourn for them. Their deaths were preordained when Caesar was born."

Kid stared at him. Vulpes pulled a bottle of water from his pack and cracked it, taking a long drink, as though he needed it. "I see something in you. I want to nurture it."

Without thinking, Kid snapped, "How would you have the faintest idea how to nurture anything?"

Vulpes swallowed, stoppered the bottle and put it away. His eyes were so blue that Kid thought he'd never properly seen the color before. They were also lit with a fire he had never seen, a storm of flame, like some cyclone had sucked in all that revenant flame within him.

"I don't," Vulpes said. "I simply said I wanted to."

It was as if some invisible threads had been holding Kid upright, feeding him power through the conversation. Power to be furious, power to expel the poison, to hiss out the words that were the shapes of his wounds, and now those threads were cut, that power depleted. He wanted to say more, to throw more of his frustration at Vulpes, but neither of them had any real understanding of how people ought to treat each other, it seemed to Kid. Kid had _ideals_ about it, ideals that were laughable in this twisted world, ideals he hadn't even thought he had. Seemed like Vulpes Inculta had them too.

Crucify someone for lying, and embrace loyalty over everything, even after everything has been flayed from you. _Funny_ , Kid thought, to realize his own line had been simply being _let be_. He'd struggled his entire life to be _let be_. Not to be part of it. He'd run and hidden and snarled and fought so that the world around him would pass their eyes over, smile and move on, never get too close. And now, he'd been chosen to be 'let be' and it was the worst feeling he'd ever had in his life. That cold slug just sat there, whenever he thought of it, as if all the slime he'd forced up and out into the atmosphere regenerated within his stomach. As if none of it mattered at all.

His mouth felt dry. He licked his lips.

Vulpes Inculta, after noting that Kid did not seem inclined to attack again, began to walk, one easy and simple step, a slow pace, like one might take with a toddler or a puppy unused to the leash.

"You never said why you kissed me," he said, and his attempt at tone was a mild one. It sounded raspy in his own ears.

Vulpes Inculta did not respond. If anything, he picked up his pace.

 

The long walks around the camp had strengthened Kid's legs, so they were only starting to ache and tremble as they reached the stop where Vulpes decided to stay the night. Cottonwood Cove was full of small, metal reinforced buildings, massive tents, and far more Legionaries on patrol than the small amount at the Forward Camp. The air smelled rich and damp and green with the river, the water clearer and less putrid here where it was wide and deep. The sand had been smoothed and cleared around the encampment, combed flat as Kid had begun to recognize, except where it was shored up by the rocks of the nearby cliffs, or to the side of the broad road that led down into the camp. Before they approached the old weathered sign that marked the camp, Vulpes had slipped the belt free of Kid's neck.

Kid had nearly forgotten it was there; the metal had warmed to his skin, the leather was loose, and the soft bump of the strap against his sternum as he walked had nearly become a comfort. It was certainly not one in the litany of discomforts that his body presented him with, that he had learned merely to ignore. He suspected that if he were presented with himself in a mirror, he wouldn't recognize the narrow figure in the tattered robe. He must look as if he'd spent a month as some Fiend encampment's prisoner.

Vulpes hooked his belt back around his waist, replacing the gun and the ripper, which he'd been carrying free, in their respective holster and loop. Perhaps he had been in a similar state of fugue to Kid, not thinking to reclaim his own property in the march. He had scarcely glanced at Kid after they'd spoken, except with razorblade glances that ensured Kid kept up his step and swallowed any further questions or discontentments he might have thought to voice. As they paused, Kid's stomach sank, that slug shifting its cold coils in his gut as he took in the familiar silhouette of a cross. It was fully dark, so the shape was a black stain against a deep indigo sky that lightened as it neared the horizon. Still, it was clear enough that the cross was occupied.

Kid swallowed and trudged onward past Vulpes, shoes scuffing with a sudden bone weariness in his limbs at the sight of one more of those breathing dead men with their eyes absent of anything but pain. As they drew near, however, Kid noted several differences between the man on this cross and the Powder Ganger's in Nipton. The man was stripped to the waist, except for a few strips of his bright pink shirt. His hair was blond, perhaps bleached the color of straw by the sun, and he was sunburnt, but not yet as sunburnt as Kid. His eyes looked tired, a lassitude of thirst and hurt evident in the tension on his face, but they were still alert, still bright with some sort of intelligence. If someone took him off that pole soon, he'd survive.

Kid's eyes couldn't drag themselves free. The man was staring at him now. Not moving, not parting chapped white lips to say a word, but tracking him with his blue eyes. They weren't the gasflame blue of Vulpes Inculta's eyes, but the blue of the edge of the horizon.

"What business do you have in Cottonwood Cove?" snapped out a stern, authoritative voice.

Kid's head snapped around. He saw that Vulpes Inculta had gotten a good distance ahead of him, and just a few feet from the frumentarius stood another Legionary, this one with a brown scarf wrapped around his head and lightly tinted sunglasses. He was startled, not that he had grown less aware of Vulpes' presence and actions, for each thing the man did seemed to imprint upon him like treads of heavy boots in fresh mud, but that Vulpes had allowed him to laggard behind, gawking at the man upon the cross. Back in Nipton, Vulpes Inculta had grabbed the front of his _chilton_ and dragged him several paces if he dared fall into step more than a few feet behind.

It should have made him feel good, he supposed. He should have presumed a measure of trust. Yet if anything, he felt only the slimy coils of the feelings in his gut shift and tighten. He felt only a delicate, needle-like fear that he lacked the vocabulary to name or the experience to put a face to.

"Ave," said Vulpes Inculta. "We will bunk here for the night, then I will make the passage to the Fort in the morning. That one," he indicated Kid with the delicate flick of a finger, "may cross with me. I have not decided."

The Legionary was clearly nonplussed at Vulpes' flippancy regarding Kid's final deportment, but was also too well disciplined to speak of it. He merely saluted Vulpes, said, "True to Caesar," stiffly, and turned back from the mound of rock at the base of the cliffs from which he had questioned them.

He paused, boots half turned away, and delivered one last, scathing tone directly to Kid: "Know that if you make trouble in Cottonwood Cove, your life will be forfeit. We will be watching you, stranger." His boots made small hisses as he descended from the rocks.

Kid moved closer to Vulpes Inculta, since the Legionary made no move to go further until he had done so, until they were within arm's distance once more. Kid muttered, "Seemed a little bit dramatic, didn't it?"

He thought he caught the quirk of an eyebrow behind Vulpes' authority glasses, but that smooth, handsome face was unresponsive as the Hoover Dam once more, without the flickers of smiles or tightening of lips that Kid had become accustomed to. He was alone now with the same Mr. Fox whom he had met in Joe Steyn's office, mild in expression and lethal in posture.

He sighed to himself and tried to will more life into his leaden limbs. Every tiny reaction that he waited for and did not receive seemed to sap his reserves. The back of his eyes held only horrors. He didn't like blinking, and hated the idea of closing his eyes. It was on reflex that he mapped Cottonwood Cove in his mind. It was out of training that he noted the trajectories of the guards and the markings of the Legion hounds. He also noticed people huddled together in a small fenced area a short distance from the main buildings, just under the cliffs, and swallowed.

 _Slavers._ Legion were slavers. That was one of two things everyone seemed to know about them. He remembered the bruising force of Vulpes Inculta's belt around his throat, now, with something dark and swollen in his chest, and felt at the memory marks of it with his fingertips.

As if he had read Kid's thoughts, or at least, the growing contours of his fear, Vulpes Inculta said silkily, "Do keep up, young man. Or do I need to find a leash?"

Kid swallowed the snarl that wanted to curl and snap across his features and stepped up his pace. Between the cold in his gut and the heat across his face and shoulders, and the numb whispering through his head, he felt like three different people, connected only by the most tenuous of threads. When he was a child, he'd seen a picture of balloons in a book. His mother had explained that they were toys, on a string, delicate things that floated in the air. The three different people Kid was right now were connected, it felt, by balloons.

Vulpes Inculta ascended the fire escape of the largest building, a blocky white structure with two standing guards. He commanded Kid to wait below the fire escape, and Kid did so, aware of the direct gaze of the Legionary who stood by the ground floor door. The wait, if anything, re-situated Kid more fully in his own skin, though that was not a blessing. Being numb, being distant, being bisected-- these were gifts, and he clutched at them as he found his own familiar consciousness returning.

Just a stupid kid, beat up and sunburnt, good at running, cheating drunks and making mountains out of molehills. Good at looking the other way. Good at saying _t_ his isn't my problem. Good at reading people. Good at disappearing when the emotional reality was too complex. Good at abandoning people who needed him. Good at being abandoned.

 _Really, Kid_ , he thought bitterly, wiping a wetness from beneath his eyelashes that he insisted was the grit of sand, _I preferred it when you were good for nothing._

 

After the lathe of his own thoughts, Kid was almost grateful for the soft and very steady beat of Vulpes Inculta's boots down the fire escape. Vulpes did not speak to him and he did not speak to the frumentarius as they moved a ways inward along the camp and Vulpes unlocked the door to one of the small metal barracks buildings. This one was empty, except for bunks, footlockers, a space heater and a small generator. There weren't even lockers, except the wreckage of one along the northern wall. Vulpes Inculta walked over to one of the bunks, removed his belt and weapons again and began to unlace his boots.

Kid hovered, uncertainly, by the door, then went to take a tentative seat on the bunk across from Vulpes. The silence was too much for him. The silence, his own skin. He'd never minded silence before. He'd always been comfortable with it. But this felt like a blade about to drop, a bullet about to be fired. The simple noises of laces being loosened in eyelets had a sinister edge.

Kid said, "I don't know how to nurture anything either."

Vulpes Inculta looked up. His face was still completely devoid of any expression Kid could read, but he removed the glasses and folded them carefully, placing them beside him on the bunk. "I have given up on that," he said mildly. The tone was more than mild, really; it was gentle. It was smooth, and caring, and everything that Kid thought Vulpes Inculta could never be. It was _wrong_ , and it sent chills down his spine.

"Ple-" he started, and shuddered, and stuttered a little bit at the unimpeded attention of Vulpes Inculta's burning eyes. "-Please don't." It was weak. He repeated it anyway, "Please don't. Give up on me."

"You have made it entirely clear that I mishandled this situation," came the silken response. "That is my failure. I am unaccustomed, these days, to failure, but-"

"Why... why don't you look at the good and the bad? Like... like a progress report? And then see what you want to do?" Kid didn't know why he felt so desperate. He still wanted to scream at Vulpes, to rail at him, to hash this all out, yet some deep instinctive part of him was certain that where Vulpes was right now, emotionally, was a place he needed to drag the Legionary out of quickly. Not just to stay alive, although Kid would never pretend self-preservation wasn't among his premier instincts. Also because Vulpes Inculta in this mood made his skin crawl.

"Then." That soft, light, glacial voice continued, velvet with an edge, ice with a growl beneath it. "I know the bad. You disobeyed me, attacked me more than once, showed recalcitrance, disobedience and insolence. You resist my every attempt to care for you."

_To... care for...?_

Kid felt as if his heart had become some strange pre-war frog or fish and leapt into his throat and he choked on it, and then realized he was choking on his own spit, despite how dry his mouth still felt. Was that what he was doing? Was this _care_?

He couldn't fathom it. He couldn't wrap his mind around the inhuman geometry of it. He wanted to tell Vulpes that, tell him how far from care what he had been doing was, but he knew that would only drive Vulpes further from whatever instinct he still possessed to care, to nurture.

He licked his lips again, swallowed and rubbed his fingertips over his jaw. "I stood watch every day I was at the Forward Camp. I mended nineteen parts of armor. I polished and sharpened twenty-three machetes. I cleaned and oiled thirty guns. I cooked dinner two nights. I made healing powder. I stood to unarmed combat training three days. I stood to melee combat training two days. I didn't try to run, or get away from you, after what I saw in Nipton. I just wanted to understand."

It might have been Kid's imagination, but as he spoke, he believed he saw Vulpes Inculta's breathing speed, and it slowed again afterward. Vulpes started to unlace his armor, and removed it, his breathing deep and unlabored. One hand raked through his short dark hair, the well-trimmed nails following a path that by now, seemed familiar to Kid.

"Pray," he muttered, "that you never understand me. And strip. You're still owed a punishment and I'm in no mood for further discourse."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry how long it took to get this chapter out. I was struggling with a hope I could make it NOT an unhealthy relationship, but... that ship sailed a long time ago. Luckily there's a lot of way up to go. 
> 
> And to my commenters- I love you dearly. I find it so inspiring to hear how much my work pleases you. I hope this chapter will be all right.
> 
> Additional warnings for an unhealthy relationship, another belt whipping (poor Kid), and I never actually tagged this dark. So sorry, my dears.

There wasn't as much to take off as the first time he was ordered to strip, no suspenders or trousers. There wass just a wide leather belt used as a cinch over the long red chilton he had borrowed, which came off as easily as a nightshirt. The only moderately complicated part of it all were his shoes, which he had to perch briefly on the edge of the bunk to unstrap and lay at the side of the space heater. 

Kid lined them up and then stood again, fingers hovering over his undergarments. For now, he decided to leave them. He shivered, and it wasn't only because of the cold room. There was a small space heater on the floor between the two bunks, but it seemed to send only caresses of warmer air across Kid's hip and thigh. There was dust everywhere- lying on every bunk, and on the floor where they had not recently trodden. The dull, almost rusted edges of the metal bunks gleamed in the very dim lamplight a dull, ugly red.

Kid stood there and thought his entire body was already like one giant bruise, exhaustion and panic clawing each other down inside him, and his heart suddenly leapt into his throat, pulse against his lips like a hammer.

He couldn't take this. Not whatever Vulpes was going to do. He felt like vomiting again, though he hadn't even had water since he'd retched for what felt like hours, so violently that all that came up at last was rust colored bile.

Now his throat felt coated with dust and his stomach twisted, and when Vulpes Inculta slowly rose to his feet, Kid shrank away from him without thinking. Vulpes paused, but he didn't look displeased. There were none of those minute tells that Kid had been catalogueing over the past few days. This was pure command, the practiced reserve of a trained Legionary, nothing different in any mannerism than it had been when he conversed with his peers outside.

Vulpes reached out and touched him. Kid shivered but tried not to back away. All Vulpes did was draw callused fingers along the top of Kid's blistered shoulder. It didn't actually hurt. His hand curled over, palm cooler than Kid's skin, and he just rested it there. It could hold Kid still, for sure, but that wasn't what it was doing now. There wasn't any weight to it. Kid drew in a deep breath and looked up confusedly into eyes like lit burners, but there wasn't any emotion there that he could properly parse. The only thing he read was intensity.

Vulpes touched his cheek next, the cut where he'd struck and later ground Kid's face into the sand. Fingertips ghosted over the raised edges of the scab, the heavy feeling of bad bruising and swelling to come, and tickled the tips of Kid's stubble as they dropped.

"Sometimes at the post," he said in his quiet, even voice, "there is a moment of clarity, after it becomes too much. After there is too much pain, too much shock, for the body to withstand. A sort of... resting place, or fever dream. I experienced it once, although I was very young at the time. Younger than you."

Kid stared at him. He was trying to connect this talk of being whipped unconscious with the grounding hand on his shoulder. His mind couldn't connect the two of them, not with the fast violent reflexes, the cruelty, the predatory curve to every smile Kid had ever seen.

"We have established that physical correction is effective on you, to a point," Vulpes continued, with a small flash of a smile that was almost coy, but definitively cold. "I have heard no prevarication from you after our first discussion of the matter. However, I am aware that this issue is not as simplistic as a broken rule."

He raised his other hand again and pressed it against Kid's sternum, almost as if he were measuring the beat of his heart.

"Every event which has happened cannot be undone. You have been thinking a great deal about the past, but your thoughts can change nothing. You may whine and rail against an unfair fate, if that is what you believe I have given you, but your past no longer exists. You need time to think about what shape you wish your future to hold. And not merely yours, but every other future you touch."

"I don't-"

Vulpes snarled, and Kid immediately fell silent. He hadn't moved his hands, but the flash of sharp teeth at the blaze in those pale eyes were enough to render Kid instantly mute. Vulpes Inculta hissed, "You have said quite enough to me this night, young man. Not one more word, unless I command it."

Kid swallowed and tried to straighten, away from the hands on his skin, but Vulpes' grip tightened.

"I require reflection from you tonight. True reflection. I will begin with a deceptively simple question, but I expect you to consider well before you answer it. Perhaps this will prepare to you reflect on the greater course of your future."

Kid swallowed again, and then nodded. He didn't really understand. So far the entire thing was more awkward than frightening, and Vulpes' hands on his skin didn't feel bad, not at all like a punishment. More as if they were holding him together and without them he'd fly into a million pieces, lose himself again.

But Vulpes was obviously angry, and his clipped, cold words promised that punishment hadn't been forgotten. And if it waited, would it be infinitely worse?

Vulpes Inculta studied him for a few seconds, eyes stern and bright like the fiercest stars after a terrible fire, and then asked his question, his voice dropping into the darkly silken range he'd used in Steyn's office. "I am giving you a choice of punishments. You may strip completely, and stand, bound, before this bunk for the hours of my rest. You will be silent and you will not be permitted to relax your muscles until it is complete, but you may have proper time to think. Or, I will beat you soundly, and then you will sleep there." He pointed at the bunk behind Kid. "You will choose the punishment that you believe will be most effective in producing what I require."

Kid froze. His dry lips started to part to ask a question, but then he remembered the stern warning not to speak. The problem, when it came to it, was that Kid already knew this was not a false choice. Vulpes would not choose the other, presuming it was the one that Kid most disliked. Vulpes knew many ways to hurt Kid, and what he had asked for was a method to ensure that Kid really thought about things. Things Kid had never thought about.

The future had always been a gray sort of hazy no man's land in Kid's head. If he started to think about what it would be like in a year, or ten years, he pushed those thoughts aside, walled them away somewhere dark inside as if they were poison. In a way, they were. Kid's life had never possessed the sort of stability that allowed for planning for the future. He might be dead in a year, or scraping again with all that he had for survival. Those weren't pleasant things to consider, but they were realistic in his experience.

Nipton had been the most steady place he'd lived, but he'd already realized that he wouldn't be going on much longer as the pretty face helping the card sharks. He'd be pressed into doing something else, and he always figured it would be killing for money. Things were tough all over in the goddamn Mojave, he thought, with bitterness, had always been his fucking mantra. He had known that people looked at him like a piece of meat, but he'd never-- never been okay with the idea of his ass being sold. Funny that when it came down to staring down the barrel of a gun against someone who wanted him dead, he hadn't cared to pull the trigger.

So where, exactly, did that leave him? His skin prickled with the cold, and it was distracting. Against that skin, Vulpes' hands had become warm. It was disturbing how much Kid liked the steady weight of them against him. He thought about standing, bound at the end of the bunk, his muscles trembling, the paltry heat not even reaching him. Utterly alone. He thought about how much he hurt. A rainbow of bruises covered his ribs. His face was swollen and hot. And the last thing he wanted to do was try to think about what future he had, bought by a sadist he absolutely hated whose hands were currently the only thing keeping him sane.

"Will you keep one hand on me, like this, while you beat me?" he asked softly. "Please?"

Vulpes lifted the hand from his shoulder and curled it through Kid's sandy hair, his thumb petting behind his ear. It felt... weird. Disconnected from the entire scenario, like a radio transmission sent to the wrong frequency.

"Yes," said the frumentarius, a quiet hiss. "Now, I'd like you bent over that bunk, if you please."

Kid nodded. He thought he'd shudder, or his heart rate would race, or he would suddenly be terrified again. But he knew what was coming, and he didn't even tremble as he turned away from the hand that dropped away from his sternum, bending low over the bunk. His knees just brushed the floor beneath, not enough to give any purchase, so he curled his toes under and braced with his hands against the mattress, hoping it would be enough.

Like the last time, he couldn't see what Vulpes Inculta was doing. He still had bruises from that time, though they were partly healed and rarely bothered him unless he hit them against something. He waited, and after what seemed far too long spent with whispering cords and fiddling, Kid felt Vulpes Inculta's hand, still warm from earlier contact, rest right at the base of his neck, between his shoulder blades.

A moment later, the first lash fell.

It was vicious. The strapping Kid had endured before had hurt, it had hurt badly, but those had been dull thuds, aches that burned and bruised. One or two had left welted cuts, but not like this. Kid thought his back had been torn open.

He opened his mouth against the dusty duvet, surprised that a scream hadn't ripped its way through his throat, but he was soundless, and only a helpless croak escaped when Vulpes gave him another, just as cruel, a few inches down his back.

Tears were pouring out of his eyes, past his lashes, across his cheeks. His fingers palmed the duvet and gripped in hard fists. He didn't imagine even a whip could hurt more than this. 

Vulpes Inculta's hand moved slightly, up to his neck. It was warm. For some reason, it made Kid's tears come harder.

"This won't do, will it?" he asked, without anything in his tone. But then, Kid felt the hard bone of a knee press into the small of his back, muscular weight holding him in place even as the hand at his neck stayed steady and warm.

And then he felt his briefs pulled down.

Kid didn't think he remembered ever being spanked. Vulpes hadn't been the first time he'd been lashed on the back, but... spanked. He didn't remember it. He'd probably only been three when he was sold. He always said five or six, because people didn't feel sorry for him as much. Now, there was that disturbing, humiliated urge to protest the slip of soft fabric over his ass, then the belt wrote its first vicious stanza on his flesh and he realized it was not any different. Maybe it even hurt more.

The belt sang. Kid couldn't help but squirm. What started as pain quickly became something that rose and burned through him at every stroke. His mind couldn't even understand where Vulpes' hand was touching him. It felt wild, strange, savage. Kid felt strange and savage.

He was crying. He had been crying for quite a while now, though he'd yet managed to bite back any squeals or screams. He felt the leather curl, soft now, over the small of his back, away from the furnace of heat and pain that his ass had become.

Vulpes Inculta laid two more harsh lashes against Kid's upper back. The first just made him blink tears, startled at the change. After the second, it was over.

Vulpes dropped the belt by the side of the bed, picked up the folded blanket from the bottom of his bunk, and laid down under it. "Reflect," he said, and closed his eyes.

Kid could not move immediately. He could not stop crying. In fact, the absence of the whipping only seemed to make the tears come faster, pouring down his cheeks, sobs ripping out of his guts. He knew he was being too loud and yet even as he pressed against the mattress hard enough to practically stifle himself, he heard himself wail as his entire body shuddered.

His knees were properly on the floor now, his chest and face pressed against a dusty mattress and duvet. He stilled as he heard the loud noise echo in suddenly silent space, but Vulpes Inculta said nothing, even though he was certainly not asleep with the whining and snuffling.

Reflect, he'd said.

Kid still thought that the man in the bunk opposite him was the worst human being he had ever met. Terrifying and beautiful like some impossible warlike angel, yes, but he was a mass murderer, a casual sadist, and someone who thought of other people's lives as if they were toys and justified it with trappings of so-called honor. He was, without a doubt, the most intelligent man Kid had ever met. In another life, he might have been solicitous, kind, even gentle, but the Legion had taken that from him. Just as it had taken any possibility of being a trusting, gentle individual from Kid.

But almost every inch of Kid's skin seemed to hurt now. His legs ached from walking. He was burned, abraded, and very much bruised. And Vulpes Inculta's hand on his skin had felt... throughout the night, Kid had classified it as steady, or grounding, or cool, or warm... but it had felt good.

He got slowly off his knees, wincing at the pain in his bottom and back, and knelt at the edge of Vulpes Inculta's bed. He wasn't bracing his hands here, so the hard floor felt harsher on his knees.

"Sir," he whispered, "Can I... sleep with you, please?"

Vulpes' eyes flew open. They were bright, like stars, or constellations. His fingers found Kid's throat and tightened as he hissed, "What?"

"Just---" Kid realized his mistake and raised both hands. "Just sleep, like... like in the desert."

Strong, rough fingers uncurled from his throat. Vulpes leaned back, and then scooted across the thin mattress, lifting the blanket in open invitation.

Kid didn't know why, but he suddenly wanted to kiss him.

He remembered the men and women who had died that first night in the canyons. He had heard them screaming and begging for their lives, but he hadn't hated Vulpes then, because he believed, in some manner, that they had deserved it. He'd been afraid too, yes, very afraid... in some ways more afraid than he was now, but mostly, he'd thought that Vulpes Inculta was right. Torturers and murders deserved to be tortured and murdered.

And, he remembered, Vulpes Inculta had practically told him the town would be destroyed. His imagination could not process what that had meant, so he had nodded and taken it in silence. But Vulpes had said, "The time Nipton has left," and Kid had nodded. And he had said slaves would come, and Kid had nodded, only to be horrified upon seeing them. What was this hurt that blossomed inside him? He knew people were crucified and murdered and enslaved. Why did it matter that he witnessed it?

As if proximity made culpability deniable.

And yet Nipton's faults had only been cheating and gambling. Why were they crucified and beheaded, and burned? 

Was he only licking the wounds of his own self-pity? Feeling morally righteous because he disdained such things? He squeezed his eyes closed. He would get that man with the bright eyes off that cross if he could. But that family... they'd never survive across the wastes, not with Cazadors and nightstalkers, not with the Fiends.

Life's tough everywhere in the fucking Mojave, he said to himself, like he always had, and it didn't sound right. Didn't sound real.

Vulpes Inculta said he wanted to nurture something, Kid thought. Maybe more Legion men do. Maybe I fucking do. Maybe we can... maybe we can make it better for them. His cheeks burned. It was such a stupid idea. 

Kid swallowed a thickness in his throat. He got on the bed, his thin briefs back up and the only thing covering him, and his body hurting and aching where it touched the mattress or Vulpes' back. He lay still, and then the hurt faded and just became warmth, and he slept. He remembered he was supposed to have thought about his future, but the trailing edges of that attempt dissolved into the oblivion of sleep.

 

Once upon a time, Kid had been a light sleeper. He bewailed this as he woke, alone, on the bunk. He shot upright, and was immediately sorry he had. More carefully, he climbed out of bed and put on the clothes he had, filthy as they were. He remembered Vulpes Inculta saying he might be left here, depending on the night before, but could not imagine the man not telling him what his intentions were before he left.

Unless... Kid was no longer an asset to him. A sudden memory of the terrified, huddled figures in the pen at the edge of the Cove sprang to Kid's memory and he felt sick, ice water leaching down his body not only at the thought of perhaps becoming that, but of allowing that, tacitly to occur.

"You really do need to think about the future," he muttered to himself.

It was an odd thing to realize. Morality had never really mattered to Kid. Other people were psychos, sadists, murderers. Slavers. He'd considered them to be fucking trash while taking their money or quietly allowing them to rescue him from something worse. So he was a leech, and he would admit it, but was it okay to... accept... what the Legion did? Those huddled figures in the pen. That man with his startling blue eyes on the cross. Maria's head on a pole.

He needed water. Getting nauseous now was just making him lightheaded.

But if he decided he would never work with Vulpes Inculta... what then? It was miles to any place habitable, and those miles filled with Fiends, Cazadors and fucking Lakelurks. Even if he thought he could finagle a way out of the camp, he'd never make it to any kind of help with no armor, no weapon, and barely an idea of where to go.

So, what if he... kept company with Vulpes for a little while? Kid had never instigated any of their kissing, of their touching. Vulpes Inculta clearly enjoyed him, for some reason. So why not use that? Why not try to use the skill that had trapped innocent souls in Nipton, had made Joe Steyn want to sell him in the first place?

Why not seduce Vulpes Inculta?

And then, as he said, maybe there would be other lives Kid could influence other than his own.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed writing Aurelius of Phoenix. If I were Kid, I'd find him extremely intimidating.
> 
> And Kid gets his first job! But is it a con? And what does Kid really want out of all this?

Vulpes Inculta entered the room just as Kid was about to tentatively exit it. They stared at each other. Something had passed between them that was uncomfortably electric, even though the look in Vulpes' eyes was alien, a foreign dialect in which Kid could only interpret one or two words and none of the meaning.

Vulpes had in his arms a small rucksack, and he gestured Kid back to the bunk and placed it down next to him. A steaming hot towel was on top, resting in a metal bowl. Vulpes took it and began to clean Kid's face. It felt amazing, luxurious, like the shave shops the whores sometimes set up in the Nipton Hotel. There was a sting, when the towel scrubbed a little at the dried blood on Kid's cheek, but even that was eclipsed by how good it felt when the clean heat to erase the road dust and the tracks of last night's tears.

Kid realized how terrible he must have looked, and also how embarrassing it was to be washed like a child. He had lost himself in the sensation, but now, as Vulpes started to wipe along the sweat trails at his neck, he reached up for the towel. "I can do that," he said, his voice a little hoarse and creaky. "You don't have to-"

"I want to," was the calm response, and Kid fell silent and dropped his hand back to his side. He didn't understand the frumentarius, and remembered dimly the muttered words, _Pray you never do._ Perhaps this was some more of whatever Vulpes thought care was, or nurturing. It was slightly embarrassing, particularly when Vulpes stripped off Kid's chilton without asking, and began to wash his arms and chest.

Still, it felt good. Almost relaxing. There was some memory associated with being washed like this, probably from when Kid was very young. That made it even more embarrassing, since Vulpes Inculta was miles shy of what Kid would consider maternal. His cheeks had heated and the towel had slightly cooled by the time that Vulpes turned to Kid's back.

Immediately, it wasn't soothing or embarrassing anymore.

Kid had a lot of bruises there, he had burned skin, and he was fully aware that he had scabbed over, deep stripes now as well, with a lot of smeared dried blood from the way he'd slept. Vulpes was methodical but not gentle as he cleaned it away, and Kid bit down hisses of pain more than once before it was done. Without a word, Vulpes turned over the towel, now filthy on one side, and lifted Kid's legs on to the bunk, cleaning them down to the ankles. He left Kid's underwear in place, but laid the towel over his thigh, as if to invite Kid to clean under them if he wished.

After a moment's thought, Kid stood up, dropped them to his knees and did a quick job of it. He felt cleaner on the surface than he had in a week, though underneath he was still raw and guilty. Vulpes, again without a word, placed fresh clothes on the bunk. They were not Legion attire, but a plain button down shirt that was greying a little from its original white, softened by multiple washings with soap and no bleach; dark grey trousers and black suspenders. Kid dressed without protest. The clothes were a little big on him, but he was used to that. He rolled the trousers under his boots and re-buckled those, and adjusted the suspenders to be taut, even though that was less than entirely comfortable. Fresh linen felt good against his cleaned skin anyway.

"Thank you," he said, and cast a sideways look at Vulpes Inculta under his eyelashes.

He hadn't forgotten the morning's resolution, but there was a world of difference between deciding seduction might help his,- and others'- situation, and actively attempting to manipulate someone like Vulpes, who could see through his every attempt at obfuscation. Overt flirtation was likely to gain a very negative reaction- not only would Vulpes detect it as false, he would be disgusted by anything that smacked of prostitution, of Kid's affections being cheap or easy.

Even now, his expression was neutral, guarded, Kid would almost say wary. It was better than that blank, featureless stillness that had come over him the previous day, but not by much. Kid mechanically rolled his cuffs and thought about what had provoked Vulpes' more intimate reactions in the past. He wasn't certain he could detect a pattern yet. Some of it seemed to be connected with learning and obedience, but some of it with Kid's own vulnerability. The latter wasn't really a path he wanted to explore.

"Am I going with you?" he asked, careful to keep his tone light. Vulpes handed him a half-filled bottle of purified water, and Kid took a swallow and handed it back.

"Yes," Vulpes Inculta said after a moment of silence. Kid would almost have suspected that he had not decided up to this point, if he had been anyone else. He didn't think Vulpes did anything that wasn't planned, not unless circumstances forced him to improvise. This was not improvisation. But there was something different, something that Vulpes was not telling him, and Kid suddenly felt a frisson of terror strike through him.

Maybe he was dressed up like this only to be handed off as a slave for-- but Vulpes Inculta had said that the Legion didn't take adult men as slaves except for workers, and Kid would be piss poor at any construction job.

He pursed his lips, licked at the raw, chapped flesh, and then decided to bite the fucking bullet. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I am not certain that you have earned enough of my trust," Vulpes said. His tone was calm, but his eyes were not. They were lambent again, bright blue gas-flames. "But I am going to give you your first task today, despite this. I will be going to the main tent, but you have not earned the right to Caesar's presence, and would be a hindrance there. Instead, Aurelius of Phoenix- the Centurion in charge of Cottonwood Cove- will give you a token which we grant to traders who bring us various necessary items."

"Where am I going to get items to trade?" Kid asked, already picking through the necessary acting, the backstory involved, in his head. He'd talked to more merchants and traders than he could count.

Vulpes shook his head. "You won't be bringing trade. Our Brahmin have not been in peak health. So far, this has been faulted to the slaves that watch them, but no one would view it amiss if a rancher or veterinary specialist was called to examine them."

Kid's stomach plummeted. Merchants he knew, trade he knew, haggling he knew. Animals were... "Sir, I don't know anything about Brahmin."

"You will have to bluff. However, it should not be of any great concern. The ruse is only what will get you escorted into the Fort. Once you are there, you are to continue with your assignment. You will not need to convince anyone you are actually examining the beasts, or in any rate, not for long."

It was risky, Kid thought. It placed a lot of stock on his ability to think on his feet, to spin yarns if challenged. He was awfully young to be accepted as an expert at anything. But Vulpes Inculta wasn't making this an offer, he was making it an order, and Kid figured if he wanted to keep what was left of his hide intact, he better find a way to make it happen.

"Okay," he said slowly. "So what then?"

"Once attention has faded, go to the tent allocated for Legion guests. It's a white storage tent in the northwestern quadrant, outside the main gates. Once there, observe everything the other guests, the merchants, say and do. One of them is not who he claims to be. You need do nothing but gather the information, and later, when I find you, pass it along to me."

"Don't stick my neck out?"

Vulpes Inculta's lips twitched into the barest beginning of a smile. "Unless you are eager for the noose."

Kid chuckled. It was the blackest of black humor, if you could even call it humor, but it suited his mood just fine. And he found it just the slightest bit encouraging that the frumentarius was capable of, if not cracking an actual joke, at least a heavy dose of irony.

"So I'm going across separately from you? You'll introduce me to... Aure..."

"Aurelius of Phoenix, yes. I highly suggest you be polite. Aurelius is aware that you are a frumentarii asset, not a veterinarian, and as such will expect you to have a degree more knowledge of the Legion than you, in fact, do. He is a Centurion, well above anyone you have previously met in terms of rank and prestige, and he has very little patience for mistakes or for wasted time. He does not suffer fools, and you would do well to remember it."

"He even outranks you?" Kid raised his eyebrows, unable to hide his surprise. The degree of respect and wariness everyone hitherto had shown Vulpes Inculta had led him to believe Vulpes' rank was something like what the Centurion was described as having.

Vulpes tilted his head. It wasn't that dangerous, predatory tilt, but something slightly more considering, though still with a chill undercurrent. After a moment, he shook his head, but only minutely. "We do not actually exist within the exact same rank structure. The frumentarii are outside the typical chain of command for the Legion. Technically, he outranks me, but effectively, I answer directly to Caesar. It is complicated."

"It boils down to me being on my best behavior, though, right?"

"Indeed." Another of Vulpes' flickers toward a smile. "I doubt he will be particularly curious about your assignment or my concerns, but if he should ask you questions, there's little need to prevaricate. After he gives you the token, take it to the Cursor at the docks. If he is to ask as to your particular business, tell him the fabricated story. Use your own judgment as to what tale to tell the Legion guests when you seek out their motives. I require that your own motives are not discovered, and that you have information for me this evening. There are no further details you need trouble with, for now."

Kid bit his lip. "You're giving me an awful lot of free range after yesterday. Is this, like, my final chance? To prove I won't disobey you or do anything stupid?"

"Hmm." Vulpes seemed to consider that. His pale eyes half lidded and a faint smile came to his lips, though it wasn't a pleasant one, or one that had anything to do with amusement. "Not entirely. If you were to attempt to run away, or to betray me, it would be your final chance. You would not receive another. But, even if you perform this task perfectly, you will still need to continue proving to me and to the Legion that you are capable and loyal."

Great, Kid thought. So it's the right length of rope, and if I do anything other than hang myself with it, I get to go on proving I can tie a decent knot.

At least Vulpes Inculta hadn't said 'useful' again. That word always stuck under Kid's skin like a burr. Even though he knew 'asset' was just a fancy way of saying 'tool,' it felt more like community to be judged by capacity and not by use. As for loyalty... he remembered that white hot, blank fury that had guided a machete toward Vulpes Inculta's throat. That was, perhaps, the only baseline he had for what loyalty meant. He didn't think he liked it. It was a raw, blank feeling that erased his sense of self.

He tried not to shudder.

Vulpes laid a hand on Kid's shoulder. It felt warm and heavy, as it had the previous night, but more familiar than grounding. "I have chosen this task with a mind to your life's path, and the skills you have shown faith in. I believe you can accomplish this, and in so doing, understand a little more of your place with me."

Kid nodded and forced a smile. The words, even pronounced in that soothing, gentle voice, liquid silk, meant very little to him. Vulpes had a better idea of what this job would entail than Kid did. For all Kid knew, he already knew who the spy was, or had planted another agent to act wonky so as to be sussed out by his rookie operative. But Kid didn't have the option of pointing out any of that. He had been given clear orders, and this was his last chance to prove he could obey them. Vulpes had not been bluffing when he said that to do otherwise would be the last thing Kid ever did.

Vulpes patted his shoulder, hard enough to actually sting, and then turned and left the room without another word. Kid stared at the empty room and took a deep, cleansing breath. He thought, as he watched dust motes dance in the artificial light, that maybe this was another part of Vulpes Inculta's lesson of reflection. Because he had leeway, he had the choice of how to proceed, and that choice allowed for the choice of non-compliance.

He could go up to visit Aurelius of Phoenix, the Centurion, and play along with everything he'd been told. Or he could take advantage of Vulpes' absence, avoid any Legionaries who had seen him the previous day, and go. He didn't like his chances alone in this part of the world, but it was a choice, after all. The minute his boot landed in the boat across to the Fort, he knew there would be no turning back. He would have chosen to work with the man who slaughtered everything he knew, to be culpable to slavery and crucifixion and savagery. Even if he believed that the Legion's so called purity of ideals held an inroad for becoming something better, joining them now-- taking this last chance Vulpes Inculta offered him-- would be a choice of survival at the cost of what few morals Kid was even aware of having.

Because leaving Cottonwood Cove any other way was ultimately choosing those morals above survival. Even if he managed to get far, he had no doubt that Vulpes, or some agent of his, would find Kid eventually. And then... eventually... he would die. It was funny, Kid thought, and he laughed softly as he thought it, but if Vulpes Inculta's own morals were consistent, he would respect Kid more for sticking to what he thought was right. For choosing death above embracing the few things that didn't sit well in his stomach. But Vulpes was, though Kid suspected he would never see it this way, a rigid sort of hypocrite. The same action, the same crime, was weighed more heavily if it was not committed in service of the Legion. Because in Vulpes' mind, everything inevitably was reduced to loyalty, and when he spoke of loyalty and of Caesar, the ring of passion in his voice betrayed how absolute his concept of loyalty truly was.

It still made Kid's skin crawl, if he was honest.

He sighed, flipped through the rucksack to make a note of its contents. Much lighter now without the towel or the clothes, it contained the half bottle of water, a packet of trail mix, and what appeared to be medical equipment. Kid recognized the stethoscope anyway, although the purpose of the various tools, tweezers and scissors when applied to a Brahmin was beyond him. He hoped whoever checked through his bag wouldn't ask him about it.

He hoisted it on to his shoulder, opened the heavy metal door, and blinked into the bright mid morning sunshine. He could smell the river, salt and silt and a little bit of the foulness that clung to most water sources. He could also smell gunpowder and the smoke from an hours-dead campfire. Everything looked much as it had the previous night, but cleaner and crisper, the edges no longer blurred by Kid's disordered thoughts.

*

He stood outside the bunker for a moment, gathering himself, then strode toward the tall building where Vulpes Inculta had met with the Centurion the previous night. The guard gave him a wary look but didn't stop him as he trod up the metal steps. They rang underneath his boots, sharp and final.

At the door, he turned, put his knuckles to the metal, and knocked politely. After a moment, an impatient voice indicated he should enter.

Aurelius of Phoenix was drinking an amber liquid from what appeared to be a shotglass. Kid deliberately did not react with confusion, since he was certain Legionnaires were not supposed to drink alcohol, but there was no way that the dark-honey substance in that glass was cola. Instead, he went meekly to the desk that lay in front of the door and waited, eyes mostly downcast but flicking in the Centurion's direction, drinking in every detail that he could.

 _Tall,_ was his first thought. Very tall. As muscular as any Legionary, he had copper-bronze skin and aquiline, chiseled features. The hair under a helmet that was bronze with a high crimson brush above it was probably dark, to match his eyebrows, but his eyes, when they turned to focus with ice and annoyance on Kid, were very dark gray.

He laid the tumbler back on top of a filing cabinet, his expression making it more than clear that he didn't fear that Kid would say a word about the extravagance. Instead, he was leonine in his capable, thoughtless grace as he stalked back toward his desk and swept his chair back from it. The feet scraped across the ground with a piercing, grating shriek.

Before he had even seated himself, Aurelius of Phoenix glared at Kid with a sharpness that really ought to have drawn blood. "Well, boy?" he snapped. "If you think that I have nothing better to do than wait around for Vulpes' profligate pet to find his tongue, you might discover what life is like _without it_."

Kid bowed his head instinctively and apologized. "I'm terribly sorry, sir. Er... Vulpes Inculta sent me for a token to-"

"To cross to the Fort, yes." Aurelius made a dismissive gesture with one large, long-fingered hand. He moved a paper on his desk, glanced at it, then looked up at Kid more directly than he had before. His eyes trailed down from the top of Kid's head to his shoes. "Get beaten plenty on that Brahmin farm, do you?" he said flatly.

Kid flushed. He had thought of that too, but believed it was the height of stupidity to argue about tactics in a spy mission with the head of the Frumentarii. But Aurelius of Phoenix was correct and it was strange to imagine a veterinary specialist would be a teenager with a bruised-up face.

"I-" he began, and was interrupted again.

"I'm not interested in exchanging dialogue with you," the Centurion said, his every word absolutely dripping with scorn and boredom. He opened a drawer in his desk with a tiny key, retrieved a small dark metal marker, and dropped it on some discarded papers. "Go."

He was, Kid knew, precisely what he seemed to be, at least at that moment. He was strict, harsh and cared absolutely nothing for some frumentarii asset. He was a man of blood, and of battle, and outside of it he soothed the inner fire that would not bank with whiskey, and probably women, anything he could get away with in his high position. He probably thought that he wasn't meant for peace, or for holding a fort, each bloody action soothing something inside him, unknotting a cruelty that tugged ever tighter the longer he was alone.

But Kid didn't think he was made for war at all. If he were, he wouldn't be so angry. So impatient. Probably, Aurelius wanted every enemy dead, wanted the Dam won, as fast as it was possible. Because existing in the coldness he exhibited was driving him insane. It was in his eyes. Stern, passionate eyes. Turning your back on something eyes. Maybe everyone else assumed Phoenix referred to the place, but Kid thought Aurelius was rising out of the ashes of something. Something he really wanted the ashes scattered from. And if he couldn't drink the blood to do it, he'd have whiskey instead.

He reached out and took the token, thanked the Centurion softly, and turned back toward the door. He was two steps away when he heard a sharp, "Wait."

His heart hammered in his throat, his foot paused before it hit the ground. Should he run? he thought. But he was here, already. He'd made his decision. He turned... slowly.

"If you flush out a rat," Aurelius of Phoenix said deliberately, "you had better trap it for me."

Kid's face went cold. He knew exactly what was meant, and saw the need for violence in every taut muscle of the tall Legionary's corded arms, twitching beneath golden skin, the flat hunger under the surface of the gunmetal eyes, and then he nodded, murmured something vaguely agreeable, and fled Aurelius' office. On the way down the staircase, he felt sick.


End file.
